Rehearsing the Future
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Rehearsing the Future

Curator

Sofie Burgoyne

Artists

Alex Last

Nadia Refaei

Jon Smeathers

4 – 29 August  2021

Open Gallery: 27 – 29 August 2021

Curator and Artist Talk: 3pm 29 August 2021

For rehearsal dates and booking please see project pages linked below

Location: Contemporary Art Tasmania

 

For the month of August, curatorial mentee Sofie Burgoyne will test whether the gallery can be a rehearsal space; a lab for live, embodied experimentation and collective learning. Invited artists Nadia Refaei, Alex Last and Jon Smeathers, will instigate public and private rehearsals for connecting, living and working together in order to try out personal, social and political alternatives for their futures. Made collectively by those who show up for the rehearsal, the gallery will become a host for future imaginaries, to which each of the rehearsal participants contributes their own concerns, experience and imagination.

 

Rehearsing the Future is presented as part of the 2021 Curatorial Mentorship

Nadia Refaei is an emerging artist and curator based in nipaluna/Hobart. Her multidisciplinary practice draws on both personal and broader histories to explore ideas around cultural dislocation. Diasporic identity has informed her interest in the relationships between migration, memory and mythology. Nadia uses installation, digital media and embodied action to examine these issues through the lens of Arab-Australian identity. Her practice combines both process-based and research-driven methods. Investigating ways to decentralise eurocentrism and interrogate imperialist mythologies underpins her practice. Nadia is also an arts worker and Co-Chair of CONSTANCE ARI.

 Alex Last (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working on Muwinina land in nipaluna, lutruwita (colonial name; Hobart, Tasmania). Alex works in a range of mediums across various disciplines, exploring the entangled, dissonant, cryptic and transformative relationships between living organisms and their human relatives. In a minor effort to dampen global anthropocentrism, Alex labours to uncover those narratives which illuminate the ornate subjectivities of earth’s scorned and unseen creatures. In recent years, various projects have involved an exploration of the material and energetic dependencies which trap human beings into extractive modes of existence.

Jon Smeathers is a musician and performance-based artist based in Hobart, Australia. Jon has exhibited and performed both internationally and across Australia, including at Serralves em Fiesta (Portugal), Melbourne Festival, the NOW Now Festival (Sydney) and Dark Mofo. He has been awarded international residencies and performance opportunities in Norway, Spain and Portugal, and awarded grants locally through the Australian Arts Council, Arts Tasmania, Creative Victoria & Hobart City Council. Jon’s work speculates on conditions of sociopolitical organisation within listening practices, media archaeology and structural alienation.

Sofie Burgoyne is an artist based in nipaluna with a background in dance and choreography. Her practice is centered around the body and rooted in choreography, but emerges in many forms. Interested in togetherness in difference, her artistic practice often sets up rehearsals or tests for being, living and working together. Sofie has recently been trying on curatorial roles as a form of friend-making or thinking-with, where she can create contexts for working alongside groups of artists in areas of mutual concern. Sofie prioritises collaboration and cross art-form conversation as processes of leaning into unexpected encounters. In 2021, Sofie graduated from Stockholm University of Arts completing a Masters degree in New Performative Practices. Recent artist credits include, The Pink Palace for Constance ARI, Field Notes from Care Workers for Bus Projects and a written publication, Red Sandstone for A Published Event’s Lost Rocks Project.

Images: Rehearsing the Future, 2021. Photo: Cassie Sullivan.

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