Curated by Charlotte Day, Shelley McSpedden and Elise Routledge, ‘Unsettlement’ is an international group exhibition exploring the ways that power manifests through architecture and in the built environments that surround us. The artworks presented register the material force and histories of architecture, and encourage a productive sense of upheaval and re-appraisal.
‘Architecture provides a tangible, physical form to the amorphous forces that shape our lives, says Day. ‘It gives us a concrete starting point to address the histories, as well as the current-day economic and political influences, that define the world we inhabit.’
Jasmina Cibic, The pavilion 2015, installation view: Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2018. Photograph: Andrew Curtis
The works of Dana Awartani (SA), Monica Bonvicini (IT/DE), Aliansyah Caniago (ID), Jasmina Cibic (SI/UK), Forensic Architecture (UK), Hiwa K (IQ), Jill Magid (US), Hayley Millar-Baker (AU), Archie Moore (AU), Amie Siegel (US) engage with specific architectural forms and histories in distinct local contexts – striving to confuse architecture’s functionality, undermine its authority or explode its mythologies. In doing so, they make visible the power dynamics and infrastructures shaping our world.
‘The artists brought together in ‘Unsettlement’ are highly attuned to how state and economic power both shapes and is safe-guarded by the built environment. This ranges from overt mechanisms of state control, such as prison camps, through to the use of the seductive language of architecture as soft power, such as in the commissioning of monumental buildings,’ Day reflects.
