MEL & NYC PROGRAM MELBOURNE 2018
BEFORE TAKING ANY ACTION
ARINI BYNG
+ SI MA VA + JESS GALL + GEOFFREY WATSON
PUBLICATION – HANNAH DONNELLY
C3 CONTEMPORARY ART SPACE | ABBOTSFORD CONVENT
In 2017, c3 presented Before Taking Any Action, a performance, installation and publication for Hobiennale, a national bi-annual arts festival first presented at Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery and Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart
This iteration re-stages the performance component in Melbourne for MEL & NYC. Coinciding with the exhibition presented by the National Gallery of Victoria MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art, MEL & NYC is a program of events presented by leading Melbourne organisations and communities exploring culture, politics, business and the everyday experience as seen through the eyes of New Yorkers and Australians.
Within the context of MEL & NYC, Before Taking Any Action focuses on the Abbotsford Convent site: investigating the networked relationships between place, community, space and time. For Before Taking Any Action, artist Arini Byng has choreographed a site-specific performance that meanders through the atmospheric gardens and architecture of the Convent. Arini’s practice concerns the aesthetics of everyday movement and how it is understood as something embodied and practiced, not just as an abstract form of consciousness. This project looks to dance history and critical theory, linking dance and the aesthetics of everyday movement—such as walking, stumbling, and leaning—to historical ideals of social order.
Writer Hannah Donnelly was commissioned to write a piece of fiction in response to the original Hobiennale project. Baayay will be presented as a reading at c3 prior to Arini’s performance. In this text Hannah speculates on a future in which our relationship to land and place is interrogated through post-colonial dialogues by an enigmatic ‘representative for future sovereignty.’
You can read the Hobiennale catalogue here
This project is supported by the Victorian Government.
PROGRAM
Saturday 16th June: 11.00am-1.00pm
Location: c3 contemporary art space
A reading of Hannah Donelly’s fiction commission Baayay
Before Taking Any Action– Performance by Arini Byng
*Please note, this project does involve light walking; the performance will go ahead regardless of weather. The gallery is wheelchair accessible, however we will be traversing a variety of terrains.
Arini Byng (born 1987) holds a B. Fine Art from NAS and B. Fine Art (Honours) from VCA in 2013. Her work has been exhibited across Australia and internationally including c3 Contemporary Art Space, Hobiennale, Bus Projects, Slopes, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Perimeter Presents, ACCA, CCP, MoMA PS1 and The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA; selected works published by Perimeter Editions, Higher Arc, Le Roy and Photofile; and with work held in publication collections of V&A, MoMA, Tate Modern, MONA and NLA.
Hannah Donnelly is a Wiradjuri woman from NSW who grew up on Gamilaroi country in Tingha and Inverell. Hannah is co- editor of the Sovereign Apocalypse zine focussing on emerging artists and storytellers. She also writes for Canadian Indigenous music culture website Revolutions Per Minute and is the creator of Sovereign Trax Indigenous music blog. Hannah’s personal work experiments with cli-fi and future imaginings of Indigenous responses to climate change, particularly through stories of our cultural flows and water management.
[Image Courtesy: Jess Gall and Otto Ivor perform as part of Arini Byng’s “Before Taking Any Action”, Salamanca Arts Centre, 2017]