Who’s Afraid of Public Space?

Presented by ACCA at Abbotsford Convent

The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art [ACCA] continues to explore the relationship between contemporary art and the broader social, cultural and political contexts of public space—at the Convent with Who’s Afraid of Public Space?

Part of ACCA’s ongoing Big Picture exhibition series—extending across public and cultural spaces in the city of Melbourne (Narrm)—Who’s Afraid of Public Space? brings together contemporary art and cultural practices to examine what constitutes public culture, the competitive ownership of public spaces, and public life characteristics and compositional evolutions in digital and physical contexts. 

Developed by ACCA curators, working collaboratively with a diverse group of artists, academics and cultural producers, the exhibition adopts a collective curatorial model. Whilst centred at ACCA, the exhibition will extend beyond the walls of the gallery into public space itself – through engagement with and interventions into public and urban realms, mainstream and social media, as well as community centres and academic contexts.

Working with an assembly of collaborators and partners, and informed by a number of workshops, think tanks and public projects over the next eighteen months, Who’s Afraid of Public Space? is organised according to a dispersed, distributed structure, encouraging a polyphonic and polycentric understanding of our increasingly complex public realm.

Led by ACCA’s curatorial team—Artistic Director Max Delany, Senior Curator Annika Kristensen and Curator Miriam Kelly—working in collaboration with a curatorial advisory group comprised of the following members:

Dr Marnie Badham
Senior Research Fellow, School of Art, RMIT University;

Eugenia Flynn
Writer, arts worker, community organiser, and PhD Candidate at Queensland University of Technology

Eugenia Lim
Artist, editor and Artistic Director of Aphids

Dr Grace McQuilten
Lecturer in Art History and Theory, and Leader of the Contemporary Art and Social Transformation Research Group, School of Art, RMIT University

Dr Timothy Moore
Director of Sibling Architects, lecturer at Monash University Art, Design and Architecture, publisher and curator of Melbourne Design Week

Professor Nikos Papastergiadis
School of Culture and Communication; and Director of the Research Unit for Public Culture, University of Melbourne

Nur Shkembi
Artist, curator and PhD candidate, University of Melbourne

Jarra Karalinar Steel
Artist, First Peoples Arts officer at City of Port Phillip, creative and cultural consultant, and Master of Arts (Art in Public Space), RMIT University

More information still to come…

Partnering Cultural Organisations

ACCA
Abbotsford Convent
Arts Project Australia
Blak Dot
Bus Projects
Footscray Community Arts
Metro Tunnel Creative Program
Testing Grounds
& installations and projects in the public realm.