The ‘Bureau for the Organisation of Origins (BOO)’ is a collaborative and interdisciplinary visual arts project that converts the BLINDSIDE Artist run space into a working ‘bureau’ to comment on Australian identity on and around Australia Day 2017. The ‘bureau’ context prompts dialogue around issues of heritage, place and belonging and the organisational systems that end up affecting everyday experience.
Artists include; Rushdi Anwar, Peter Burke, Linda Choi, Jaye Early, Carly Fischer, Raafat Ishak and Tom Nicholson, Sean Lowry, Mayatilli Marika, Wandjuk Marika OBE (c.1930-1987), Ramon Martinez-Mendoza, Performprint (Joel Gailer + Jenny Hall), Elvis Richardson, Benjamin Sheppard, Elmedin Žunić and more.
As the current political attitude shifts to the insular, notions of belonging to a nation state become increasingly problematic for various communities and demographic groups. In direct correspondence with the fervor surrounding Australia Day, a series of participatory and collaborative gestures will be staged in and around the gallery and its immediate precinct; various performative works will extend beyond the gallery into nearby public spaces, engaging ‘Australian Open’ tennis fans, tourists and the general public. As an experimental inquiry into notions of national identity, the project will simultaneously serve as workshop, meeting venue and exhibition space. The ‘BOO’ will speculate on the specific preoccupation with national identity by examining Australia’s cultural self-evaluation surrounding, and ‘celebrated’ on, Australia Day 2017.
BLINDSIDE Artist-run space
Until 11 February, 2017
Melbourne
Sean Lowry, UNAUSTRALIA, 2013, overpainted wall painting, acrylic sign writing and gallery stock paint, overpainted wall painting, acrylic sign writing and gallery stock paint, 1800 x 1990cm
Photograph by David Lawrey
