The Consequences of Success comprises three different works: a video installation, ephemeral sculptures and a site-specific work in the Food Court, Docklands. Five TV screens show manipulated and distorted landscape images. These are complemented by Zhou’s depiction of fruit and vegetables: in her black toffee sculptures of five common fruit and vegetables; as well as the installation of real fruit and vegetables mounted on thin skewers inside the Food Court’s window spaces.

The exhibition invites audiences to contemplate the idea of nature and Australian natural environment. It attempts to uncover the violence embedded in basic human activities of survival and environmental change;- the aftermath of distortion, melting and piercing.

Over the last two centuries, Australia’s natural environment had been dramatically transformed by the human activity of ‘home making’. Since the colonial period, European farming and cultivation of ‘foreign’ food and the construction of urban spaces has dramatically changed Australia’s ‘native’ ecosystem and caused the extinction of many native plants and animals. Today, these native lives are promoted as the political symbols of Australian nationalism, as well as exotic commercial products for a niche market.

Zhou sends a reminder that Australia is a place made from an ‘imported culture and brings awareness to the fact that very little of everyday life in Australia, including the food that we consume, originates here. She suggests that this fracture between society and the ‘native’ ecosystem is the cause of deep melancholy.

http://www.siyingzhou.com/

Facebook Event:
https://www.facebook.com/events/679507212164770/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

Library At The Dock is located across the water from The Food Court on the other side of the harbour.

Ara Dolation: "Ontological Orchestra"
A hybrid ecosystem simultaneously resembles a semi functional apparatus, the model of a utopian city and a biological experiment. It also conflates a number of ideas around the themes of the studio and the laboratory and in turn social and environmental politics. These assemblages represent social and spatial territories connecting forms, materials and ideas. They create a conceptual framework that connects the social and the physical dimensions of a place. They define the concept of place not as a location but an assemblage of connections, a way to organize meaning. The structures are hybrids; part social, part natural and part mechanic. Though they weave networks of liminal spaces each is autonomous forming fixed, arbitrary spaces, places, zones and territories. Medium: timber, glass, plants, motors, acrylic, found objects.

www.aradolation.com

Ara Dolatian and Michele Donegan collaborate as Nomad, designing and installing coloured woollen webs in galleries and public spaces. The designs respond to each particular site considering architecture and purpose. The webs grow intuitively and organically. Their latest installation - Float - for the Food Court in the Docklands reflects the open nature of Docklands being situated on the water. 

The web reinvents the site by creating a sense of other-worldliness and transforms the nature of the space. The work forms a “shelter” that is reminiscent of nomads stopping and establishing a safe place for a period of time. The web is accessible to a wide public audience to explore, enjoy and be immersed in. 

Ara and Michele, both graduates in Fine Arts met at RMIT in 2010 where they were studying sculpture. They have been collaborating as Nomad since 2011 and have installed webs at RMIT First Site Gallery, Federation Square Fracture Gallery, Victoria Park, Coburg Mall, Coburg Library, Artful Dodgers Studios and Fitzroy Gardens. "Float" at The Food Court is the largest and most challenging space Nomad has inhabited. 

To view images of Nomad’s work go to the Nomad page on:

www.aradolatian.com/#!nomad-/c544

www.aradolatian.com
www.micheledonegan.com

Inflame (2013)

Coburg Library 2013

Inflame (2013)

http://www.aradolatian.com/#!nomad-/c544

No hangers. No hierarchy.

Come and try on the 'essentials' in FLOORDROBE. An installation of flexible garment pieces, you are encouraged to self-fashion from the floor and facilitate your own wearable narrative of integrity.

The 'essentials' is a tool kit for fashioning social, moral and structural integrity through garments. Presenting a framework for embodied design practice, FLOORDROBE: the essentials asks - what does integrity look like on you?

FLOORDROBE: the essentials, the concluding installation to the project Integers sets up a casual ‘bedroom-esque’ space for the public to engaged in a ‘self-fashioning’ experiment. The public are encouraged in to try on the new ‘collection’ of  ‘floordrobe essentials’ – catalyst garment pieces ‘tools’ that participants ‘design through wearing’ to suit their individual taste; social situ; activity and so forth. All catalyst pieces are size-free; zero waste and genderless so can be experienced by anyone. The purpose of FLOORDROBE: the essentials is to present a democratic engagement with fashion for the general public and illuminate design (specifically fashion) as a catalyst for social change.

It is a free installation and participants are encouraged to fashion integrity with :the essentials and continue a dialogue of their experience online through social media. The installation operates on the combined principles of co-design, non-intentional design and critical design as catalysts for future fashion methodologies. All emerging modes of practice in fashion and associated design fields.

https://clunymccullagh.squarespace.com/floordrobe/