et al.
epochal
This publication accompanies New Zealand collective et al.’s first Australian survey exhibition at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA). The exhibition marks the largest presentation of the artists’ work outside New Zealand since representing the nation at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. Curated by MUMA Senior Curator Pip Wallis, it encompasses installations from across the practice alongside a new film work.
et al. comprises a constellation of artists and shifting identities, their anonymity calling into question the nature of authorship and the persistent preoccupation with the singular artistic vision. Their practice brings socio-political and philosophical reflections to bear on ideologies, power structures and models of collective thinking. With the increasing circulation of mis- and disinformation online, et al.’s practice provides a critical perspective on the growing polarisation of political attitudes and erosion of democracies worldwide.
This major publication, sensitively designed by Žiga Testen and Stuart Geddes, is richly illustrated and includes newly commissioned essays by four writers, curators and art historians: Jan Bryant, Natasha Conland, Gwynneth Porter and Pip Wallis. For the very first time, it includes a comprehensive bibliography and history of exhibitions, making a significant contribution to the scholarly recognition of the practice.
Jan Bryant is a writer and academic interested in the material basis of contemporary art practices and their political and philosophical resonances. She is Director of Art Programme, an anti-institutional art initiative based in Melbourne that generates online courses, studio pracs. and artist-led projects.
Natasha Conland is a Senior Curator of Global Contemporary Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. She has over twenty years’ experience developing exhibitions of contemporary art, and has written for a number of contemporary art journals and catalogues in the Asia-Pacific region. She co-edited Reading Room, a peer-reviewed journal of contemporary art published annually by the E. H. McCormick Research Library, Auckland Art Gallery, 2006-18. She has a long interest in performance, art in public space and the dissemination of the historic avant-garde.
Gwynneth Porter is a writer and editor from Ōtautahi Christchurch in Aotearoa New Zealand. Writing essays on art since the mid-1990s, her practice has involved persistent experimentation with forms, methodologies and subject positions. With a long history of collaborations with artists in publication development and artist-led projects, she has a working background in art school teaching, visual arts publishing, and art museum curatorial and public programmes mahi. In 2020 she completed a PhD through Monash University in Melbourne’s Department of Art History and Theory with a thesis titled ‘Delinquent Palaces: Adolescent Museum Visitation in Literature’. She is currently Librarian at Christchurch Women’s Prison.
Pip Wallis is Senior Curator at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA). She has held curatorial roles in Australia, the United Kingdom and Europe. She has written for numerous publications and journals with a particular interest in performance art and dance. Pip is a Chief Investigator on the Australian Research Council (ARC) funded study Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum (2020-24).
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