Around the Outside: Feminist Specificities

Come and join us for a beer and snag as the first instalment of Around the Outside 2018 explores expanded forms of feminism in contemporary art. The night will feature: a performance lecture by Astrida Neimanis, the presentation of video work by Lilly Lai and photographic work by Hannah Brontë, and the presentation of new sound/performance work by Barbaralla Karpinski.

Part reading room, part film club, and part open dialogue, Around the Outside is dedicated to fostering informal, non-institutional learning and creative criticality. These events are hosted at Firstdraft Gallery and vary in content, such as performance, lectures and screenings.

Taking Laboria Cuboniks’ manifesto, ‘Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation’ as a point of departure, this instalment of Around the Outside will explore various manifestations of feminist thought in contemporary art. It will take into account perceptions of universal feminisms and those grounded in intersectional politics, and will feature performances, talks, another edition of our ATO reader to sink your teeth into on the day (or take home with you to tackle in your own time), and as always, a BBQ in the courtyard.

ARTISTS & SPEAKERS:

Barbaralla Karpinski

Writer/Artist, Barbaralla Karpinski, will be performing her bittersweet queer spectacle from her Writers Residency, 17/18, and reading her uniquely edgy writing in a context of gender fluid glamour with vivid never vapid visual histories of queer, sex work and time passing. Writer/artist, Ainslie Templeton, will be collaborating on the reading and performance of Karpinski’s writing.

Astrida Neimanis

What will the sea archive, forty-nine years from now? In this performative speculation, the narrator pre-imagines our dumped desires and material remains, archived in a near future by the planet’s oceans. Here, settler colonial complicity in anthropogenic extinctions and pollutions (both human and more than human) swims alongside an acknowledgement of the continued presence of ways of life that challenge these violences. Trying to fathom the sea floor of this future ocean, the narrator asks: might time-travel offer a different kind of breathing room?

Astrida Neimanis writes mostly about bodies, water and weather, in an intersectional feminist mode. Her most recent book is Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology (2017). Currently she is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, on Gadigal land, in Australia.

Lilly Lai

Rinse is a series of recorded performances in which Lilly Lai scrubs/covers her body in paint. The artist intends to physically explore the intersection between her body being governed by politics and how she governs herself politically.

Hannah Brontë

These portraits honour the healing, generous and warm energy of black and brown women. We are often not allowed to channel these parts of ourselves as there is a need for toughness, barriers and a protective armour simply to “be” in this world. I wanted to protect these beautiful women with the colour orange. It is the first colour seen in the womb, behind eyelids it is the warmth from the inside. By wrapping and adorning all of the women in this portrait series, with orange by the fresh water I wanted a sense of calm and permission to be open. These women are strong and defiant all in their own ways but this series was to honour the healing and gentle parts of ourselves we sometimes try to bury. The divine women photographed are Jennifer Johnson, Hannah Stanton, Wagner Kennell, Emily Wurramara and Murrawah Maroochy.

Event Details:
Thursday, 19th April
6–8pm