Event Comment Is Free

Comment Is Free

Marysia Lewandowska

5 May. 2016 14 Jun. 2016
  • Event Cost:
    Free

In 2015, as part of Imaginary Accord, the IMA invited London-based artist Marysia Lewandowska to undertake a year-long research project attending to their institutional history and practice. This engagement has resulted in a series of nodes that are launching over the next 40 days. Comment Is Free intervenes in the official IMA archive, inviting a wider public to share their voice. Through an open call function, Add Your Voice, the public can contribute comments, documents, and multimedia for forty days, from today until 14 June 2016. Unlimited, a special silkscreen print, has been developed by artist Marysia Lewandowska as a limited edition of 100, downloadable for a duration of forty days, beginning on 5 May and ending on 14 June 2016. Commemorating the forty-year anniversary of IMA, the artist traces its institutional history by looking at the relationships between the provision of spaces designated for exhibition and those for administration. They are represented across the four buildings (from left to right: Market St, Edward St, Ann St and Brunswick St), through their respective floor plans. One can clearly discern how the original location consisted almost exclusively of the gallery space, and how over the four decades since 1975 the changes in how art is produced, exhibited, and distributed are spatially articulated by an institution. The liquidity of the golden spill running across the print suggests the unlimited potential of connecting the past with the future, binding the two without determining the exact shape of the outcome.

The Institute of Modern Art acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land upon which the IMA now stands, the Jagera, Yuggera, Yugarapul, and Turrbal people. We offer our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the first artists of this country. In the spirit of allyship, the IMA will continue to work with First Nations people to celebrate, support, and present their immense past, present, and future contribution to artistic practice and cultural expression.

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