Correspondence of Imaginary Places (CoIP) is a partnered exhibition between Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space and ArticulateUpstairs in Sydney, NSW Australia. The simultaneous openings of the two events in New York City and Sydney will take place on Friday, May 26 from 6-8p and feature a live link-up and artist talk. A publication documenting the artworks will also be launched at the exhibitions’ openings. Both exhibitions will run until June 18, 2017.
Correspondence of Imaginary Places is an exhibition of material produced as part of a wider, international partnership between ABC No Rio in New York and the Cementa17 Art Festival in Kandos, NSW. The CoIP artists explored how we imagine places we have never visited by creating works in distant locations through dialogue with another artist on-site. The creation of the artworks took place in two stages with two groups of artists: seven at ABC No Rio, in Manhattan, paired with seven artists at Birds Hut near Kandos, NSW for Cementa17 Festival.
In the first stage of the partnership (March 2017), each Australian artist directed an instructional artwork for their American artist-partner to manifest, perform, and document somewhere in Manhattan. The second stage, which took place between April 6-9, 2017, inverted the relationship and each American artist directed their Australian artist-partner to manifest an artwork at Birds Hut Ganguddy in the rural landscape near Kandos as part of the Cementa17 Festival.
CoIP investigates cultural realities of navigating a global society across the real and imagined conceptual, environmental and socio-political distances that it spans. The project was conceived by Alex Wisser (Australia) and Scott Seabolt (USA). It is curated by Alex Wisser and Sarah Breen Lovett in Australia, along with Scott Seabolt, Jill O’Bryan and Kate Ruck as Curatorial Assistant in America.
ABC No Rio is a collectively-run center for art and activism, known internationally as a venue for oppositional culture. Founded in 1980 by artists committed to political and social engagement, ABC No Rio seeks to facilitate cross-pollination between artists and activists, and is a place where people share resources and ideas to impact society, culture, and community. Art and activism should be for everyone, not just the professionals, experts, and cognoscenti. The ABC No Rio community includes artists and activists whose work promotes critical analysis and an expanded vision of possibility for our lives and the lives of our neighborhoods, cities, and societies. It includes punks who embrace the Do-It-Yourself ethos, express positive outrage, and reject corporate commercialism. It includes nomads, squatters, fringe dwellers, and those among society’s disenfrachised who find at ABC No Rio a place to be heard and valued.
Cementa17 Art Festival Cementa Inc. is a not-for-profit incorporated association dedicated to cultivating contemporary Australian art. Cementa’s major production is a biennial festival of contemporary art in the town of Kandos in the NSW Central West. Cementa festival brings together artists from urban and regional contexts for a 4-day celebration of the state of contemporary art in Australia. More than 60 artists exhibit video, installation, sound, performance and 2D and 3D artworks in venues and locations across the town and its surrounds. Venues include shopfronts, vacant lots, the scout hall, local museum, community centre, golf course, people’s yards, rural properties and public parks. The works address the identity, history and current social, environmental and economic context of the town and its region. Taking its regional situation as its focus, Cementa celebrates the rich diversity of voices that can be heard within our contemporary arts communities across the spectrum of practice, from the emerging to the established, from the obscure to the prominent.
ArticulateUpstairs is the mezzanine space on the first floor of the Articulate building, located at 497 Parramatta Rd, Leichhardt, NSW Australia. ArticulateUpstairs accepts proposals and expressions of interest from artists for small scale projects and wall installations. These can include abstraction, installation, photography or moving image, expanded painting and drawing, collecting and archival projects, documentation projects and projects that explore curating and exhibiting as an installation practice.
Artists Alliance Inc. is a 501c3 not for profit organization located on the Lower East Side of New York City within the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center. AAI is supported in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. This program is made possible by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts. We thank the New York City Economic Development Corporation and individual supporters of Artists Alliance Inc for their continued support. Special thanks go to our team of dedicated volunteers and interns, without whom this program would not be possible. For more information, visit artistsallianceinc.org.