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Melinda
Rackham
artist ~ author
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2022
Cold Case
Perfomed at RASA - July 2022
Performed at ACE - 10 November 2021
This is the true tale of my birth mother’s husbands’ gangland killing in Western Sydney in 1984. Over 9 parts it draws from her forgotten texts to expose the hidden violence of intergenerational forced adoption.
In progress for page and stage. |
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Chelsea Lehmann, Internal Conflict, 2021, oil on board, 35 x 25 cm
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regarding the gaze
Essay for COUNTER HISTORIES on artists Chris Aerfeldt & Chelsea Lehmann showing at Praxis Artspace.
"With each knowing gesture, subtle tear and luscious rip in the social fabric, contemporary Mistresses Chris Aerfeldt and Chelsea Lehmann unsettle and unshackle the power relations of the gaze. Their women, redrawn from the annals of art, mythology and theology, disrupt and discard fixed oppositional perspectives. Instead, through their expansive oeuvres, we feel and slip into multiple presences, human representations, emotional, intellectual, material and spiritual experiences." |
NFT precursors
I've been doing some research into NFT's and looking back 21 years to 2000 when I was proud to be part of art©art the first online internet art shop founded by Mario Hergueta. A physical manifestation of the gallery was also presented at Art Frankfurt2001.
My work a.land was for sale (the yellowish work in the centre of the image) with the purchasers name customised into the initail boarding pass screens of the animated sea voyage. a.land was of course also available online to view for free, the novelty and rationale for purchase was to own a unique version.
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2020
This project is gratefully supported by copyright.org.au
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#remakemistresses
Responding to Covid-19 lockdown, Museums across the globe threw out a challenge to recreate works in their (old master heavy) collections I thought:
Why not remake contemporary Australian mistresses instead!?
My Instagram intervention #remakemistresses started in iso and continues to redress the glaring inequity in Museum acquistions. |
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2019
global:
Jacky Winter Gardens Spring Residency with Elvis Richardson
We arrived with a multitude of files and left with the structure of our
co-authored project on gender inequity in the Australian context - CoUNTess : Spoiling Illusions since 2008,
based on Elvis Richardson's CoUNTess
Blog. A heady mix of rigorous research, humorous blog rants, hard
crunched data, theoretical musings, intimate revelations and visual art
works, the book will launch mid 2020.
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 Thank you enormously
Jacky Winter Gardens
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tunnel
My 1996
net art work exploring the slimey arena of
cybersex, stands the test of time. It is showing in Maschine Divas
along
with some fabulous techno chicks at this
years edition of steirischerherbst
in Graz,Austria
September
2019
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Counting Costs
Hunkering
down over winter writing an expansive text exploring gender
representation
in contemporary and historical creative cultures for a new book co-authored with Elvis Richardson:
CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions since 2008. |
local/global:
texts
The VNS Matrix site
has dropped!
Included are my
series of four Essays on
their
extraordinary art practice from the early 1990s till today. Such
a pleasure to be their Archive Essayist. Go fall into
the Matrix thru the sensate design of Frances d'Ath.
screenshot : vnsmatrix.net [2019]
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exhibition
2018
national:
SALA
Patron's Arts Writer's Award 2018
recent
texts:
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I was invited to write Giving not Given on the relationship between
Tertiary Creative Arts and Philanthropy for NiTRO: Non Traditional
Research Outcomes, the online publication of the Australian Council
of Deans and Directors
of Creative Arts. These complex relationships are explored using the Samstag Bequest as a case study. Thank you Ross
Wolfe and Erica Green
(Director Anne and Gordon Samstage Museum) for you significant
contributions to this article. |
| Intimacy of Strangers was
comissioned for the Print
Council of Australia's publication Imprint Vol. 53, No. 3 launched in September 2018.
It focuses on the collaborative practice of Rare Earth Artists
Lab : REAL
- John
Blines, Michele Lane and Georgina Willoughby, who work with community
engagement, ephemeral installation, multimedia, print-making and sound
to unravel our relationship to climate crisis and humanity's
existence on this unique planet |
Graft:
projections & soundscape, Port Adelaide, 2018
Image: Michele Lane |
2017
national:
ADOPTED launch
After two years
of writing and editing ADOPTED
has at last launched!
This has
been a challenging project with co-authors Rebecca Johnston Diana Dunning and Sofie Gregory
exploring experiences of trauma
loss and reclaiming identity
in poetry
and prose.
Designed by Helen Vaskin
produced by IdentityRites
with support form RASA
Forced Adoption Support Service Special thanks to David Chapple
ADOPTED
is availabe FREE
for
a limited time
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UK
conference, workshop, research
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In Other Tongues:
creative summit and residential short course.
Some wonderful experiences exploring
relationships
between our human selves and the other species and organisms with which
we share the planet through story, poetics, dance, and philosophy. This
interdisciplinary international gathering in early
June at Dartington Hall, Devon, UK brought unexpected realisation
and inspiration.
Thankyou to Arts
South Australia for funding my travel for participation in this event
and to view manuscripts at Exeter Cathedral with Prof Emma Cayley of Exeter University. |
academic appointment
Adjunct Research Professor
EASS, University
of South Australia Very much looking forward to a
productive ongoing relationship with
UniSA supporting the School
of Art, Architecture and Design's
HDR candidates in practice-based creative arts research; providing
strategic advice to the School in areas of technology and culture;
research contributions for ERA purposes; developing externally funded
research, guest lectures and workshops. |
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recent
texts
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The Samstag Legacy: An Artist's Bequest I
reaIly enjoyed reviewing this intriguing
tale of adventure and
philanthropy on New Deal painter Gordon Samstag and textile
designer Anne Samstag. Part archeological dig, part
psychoanalyst’s couch, a rollicking read edited by Ross Wolfe with art
historian Lea
Rosson DeLong. Read online or in print in Data Visual, Artlink Issue 37:1| March 2017 Guest
editor: Ian Millis |
europe
2016
national/global:
recent texts
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local/global:
whitewash exhibition
 A
suite of haunting, poetic memoirs inscribed onto the walls of Sauerbier
House. |
Saturday 13 August, 2016,
from 2 - 4 pm
Please join me for high tea and
champagnate at my WhiteWash
Exhibition Opening at Sauerbier House, Port Noarlunga. The house will
ressonate with the sounds of composer and
cellist Allye Sinclair, and I will be reading fragments of poetic texts
from the walls.
Follow the WhiteWash
Journal ... |
national:
SALA Monograph launched
Funded
by ArtsSA, edited
by Margot Lloyd,
designed by Rachel
Harris and
published by Wakefield Press. |
A
happy author at the Art Gallery of South Australia SALA opening , and the launch of my
monograph on multi-disciplinary
artist Catherine Truman : Touching Distance.
a sneak peek: "Catherine Truman's practice has a
palpable anatomy. Silken threads, connecting gestures, forms and
techniques, reach across time and location, between suites of more
traditionally crafted work and those that infiltrate and augment the
scientific realm. The intertwining interdependent systems in her work
articulate the relationships between the felt and experienced; the seen
and unseen; between medium and production." |
national:
panelist at GOMA
Dr Emma A Jane,
Paul Barclay, Dr Melinda Rackham Dr Nicolas Suzor and Alanah
Pearce via skype. |
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local
#adoptionmemorial
Image:
the space between Photo :Tait Schmall
Artists: CHEB - Deb Jones and Christine Cholewa,
The
Memorial for Forced Adoption was unveiled by SA Premier Jay
Weatherill on Thursday 14 July at
Grundy Gardens on the Torrens Riverbank.
After two years serving on the Steering
Comittee for this important Commerative Artwork, we are proud to see
its powerful public presence actualised - acknowledging the ongoing
affects of Forced Adoption which impacts 1 in 15 Australains.
see news.com.au
coverage
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local
and online:
writer-in-residence and whitewash website
image from
whitewash website
a home of sorts, 2016
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Over three bleak months of winter as writer-in-residence
at Sauerbier House
on the mangificent Onkaparinga estuary at Port Noaralunga, I am
inscribing text directly into architectural
space.
Poetic fragments of memoir from a young
C19 resettled Irish domestic servant emerge simultaneously on site and
online. Walls and linnen echo her dislocation, loss of identity and
uncertaintly - but also curious wonder of her strange new antipodean
home.
Visit WhiteWash ... |
global :
With the Tip
of a Needle - an essay for Garland
 Masuma Akther
Stitch of Bonds, 2003 Photo:
2015, Jonathan VDK |
"A fine needle, a loop
of yarn, a hand moving, thread
drawing through fabric; and repeat.
Stitching is a nuanced language spoken mainly by women in local
dialects that are recognised across global cultures.."
So starts my essay on three women from Afganistan, Iran and Bangladesh,
who gain new insigts through teaching their traditional emboridery
skills for Guildhouse.
Read More... |
2015
award
2016
SALA Monograph
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Catherine
Truman
Torn Red
Shell in aritst's hand, 2013
Image courtesy of the artist
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Although
enduringly fond of carving
Mother-of-Pearl and English Lime, Catherine Truman's oeuvre extends to
choreography, public sculpture, installation,
photograph, poetry and moving image.
I am particularly
interrested in writing this monograph in drawing out
the intersubjectivity of working immersively with scientists for 17
years, which has taken her
makings into the sensate and anatomically unfamiliar – probing
the thresholds of human being.
A delight to be mentoring Emerging curator and writer Andre Lawrence.
Book to
be published in July 2016. |
regional:
a very big dry
local :
WIMP: Windows, Icons, Menus & Pointers
Five sweet 20 second stories in the
language of computer and mobile screen
icons. I've really
enjoyed making these playful low resolution works: the
nostalgia of an #earlyApple desktop contrasts with
#lateWindows working day parade; #mobMe texts in icons of social
media; #screenFever flushes out the graphical creatures
inhabiting our interface jungles; while #playTime points to pure
entertainment. You
can watch them here or tweet them to the Rundle
Lantern big screen.
global :
Art of
the Networked Practice | Online Symposium
Speaking with Ken Wark and Charlotte Frost on a panel at an
international gathering exploring emergent
forms of networked research, artistic production, and teaching in the
arts. Intended as a global and inclusive gathering, without
registration fees, this Symposium unites local and remote speakers and
audiences via Web-conferencing to discuss a range
of topics, including: distributed teaching and studio models,
collective research, peer-to-peer cultural production, networked
performance, big data cultural analytics, and a broad range of issues
in Internet art & culture.
local :
Theatre of
Detail
Here's my catalogue essay for Theatre of Detail
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new work by Gray Street Workshop partners Jess Dare, Sue Lorraine and
Catherine
Truman, set to tour nationailly and internationally in 2015 and
2016. A celebration of the Workshop's evolution over 30 years, the
exhibition will be launched
at Gray
Street
Gallery on 5 March 2015.
global :
-empyre-
Its great revisting -empyre- [soft-skinned space], the forum created
as part of my PhD in 2002, to contribute to the February
2015 discussion New Year/ New Tools and Technologies.
2014
national:
Bundanon Trust
Artist In Residence
The
Musicians Cottage,
Bundanon
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My
residency at Bundanon enables research and
writing time for my first
novel Attachment. This highly
intimate memoir deals with issues of identity, loss and grief brought
about by the traumatic separation at birth from my mother and my
subsequent adoption, then the removal of my only child at 15, also
through forced adoption.
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global :
see my 1996 net art work
tunnel (exploring the slimey arena of cybersex)
in the VAGINA 2.0, show at Vagina Museum, Vienna,
Austria,
from May 2014.
local:
Manifest De Stillare -
catalogue essay
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The Microscope Project
at Flinders Art Museum & City Gallery at the State Library,
Adelaide,
Australia. My catalogue essay Manifest De Stillare discusses
artists
Nicholas Folland, Ian
Gibbins, Deb Jones, Catherine Truman, and Angela
Valamanesh reconstruction of whimiscal, surprising and poetic artworks
from a suite of decomissioned analogue microscopes. |
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