Permanent Recession
Book Launch
Presented by All Conference
All Conference is pleased to announce the release of its first major publication Permanent Recession: a Handbook on Art, Labour and Circumstance. Published by Onomatopee Projects, Permanent Recession is an enquiry into the capitals and currencies of experimental, radical and artist-run initiatives in Australia. Excavating a shared history of independent practice stretching back to the 1980s, this publication situates new research within a rich continuum of debate about the Australian artmaking context. Part research, part advocacy document, part literature review, part reader, Permanent Recession is a living contribution to current thought. As a handbook, it is a compilation of useful information in a compact and handy form. It should be used!
The launch will include a panel discussion with local creatives working in various fields including Beth Sometimes, Bec Capp & Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi
ABOUT THE BOOK
This expanded study reveals and interrogates the economic and cultural particularities of these creative organisations and the political territory in which they operate. The intention is to produce cultural and metric evidence of the value of the small-scale and Artist-Run sector, distinct from the larger pool of small-to-medium organisations and to assess the true impact of this stratum. Permanent Recession is collective resources, providing strategies essential for the future integrity of the sector, and of the Australian arts ecology more broadly.
This publication combines new qualitative and quantitative research around the small-scale and artist-run sector in Australia, contextualised within a catalogue of re-published texts going back to the early 1980s, so as to situate new research within a rich continuum of thought and debate about the Australian artmaking context.
Artist-run spaces are not merely transient projects by undergraduates. They embody a nuanced and highly resourceful response to the economic challenges faced by working artists and small-scale cultural practice. They have repeatedly demonstrated highly successful adaptations to the constantly evolving artistic environment while maintaining a shared commitment to artistic autonomy, small-scale economic independence, diverse practice and a nimble and flexible operational doctrine. ARIs are some of the great unheralded success stories of Australian culture.
Including new and republished texts by Peter Anderson, Andrew Brooks, Andy Butler, David Corbet, Léuli Eshrāghi, Ben Eltham, Catherine Ryan, Colleen Chen, Tristen Harwood, Mark Jackson, Georgie Meagher, Macushla Robinson, Anne Marsh, Jacqueline Millner, Kate MacNeill, Bernice Murphy, Margo Neale, Spiros Panigirakis, Francis Russell, Kate Scardifield, Philipa Veitch, Amelia Wallin, and Tian Zhang; and transcribed discussions with Esther Anatolitis, Hana Pera Aoake, Marnie Badham, Clare Cooper, Sarah Gory, Lucie McIntosh, Lisa Radford, Pip Shea, Talia Smith, Pip Wallis, Katie Winten, and Tian Zhang. Edited by All Conference co-convener, Channon Goodwin.
ABOUT ALL CONFERENCE
All Conference is an organising network established in 2016 and comprised of fifteen Artist-Run, experimental and cross-disciplinary arts organisations from around Australia. The network is the result of a national collectivising impulse by a dynamic group of organisations focused on the production and presentation of new contemporary art. The group’s current members are BLINDSIDE, Boxcopy, Bus Projects, c3 Contemporary Art Space, Cool Change Contemporary, Constance ARI, FELTspace, Firstdraft, KINGS Artist-Run, Liquid Architecture, Outer Space, Runway Journal, SEVENTH Gallery, Trocadero Artspace, un Projects, Watch This Space, and West Space. Working together, this alliance forms a platform for research, publishing and knowledge-sharing. All Conference champions the important role that artist-centric organisations play in sustaining the Australian arts ecosystem and in imagining alternative futures.
ABOUT CHANNON GOODWIN
Channon Goodwin is an artist and artworker based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia, on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. His work engages with collective, collaborative, and artist-run practice and forms of artist-led organisation building. Channon is the current Director of Bus Projects, and founding co-convener of All Conference. He aggregates his various collaborative and independent work under Fellow Worker. Prior to this, he was a founding Co-Director of Boxcopy in Brisbane.
WHEN
WTS Zine Fair
Saturday 10 October
11am, Watch This Space