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In 2011 ACCA’s annual NEW exhibition continues with 10 new commissions from a collection of emerging Australian artists. This years installment of ACCA’s NEW series is presented by the Balnaves Foundation.

Curated by Hannah Mathew, the works of NEW11 present the individual concerns and interests of each artist’s practice; however together they are linked by a common interest in materiality. Ranging in size and medium, the works made by the artists for NEW11 will question and change the physical properties of their chosen materials. The outcome will be an exhibition where the uncanny, symbolic, political, historical and comedic can all be found.

featured artistsFiona AbicareRebecca Baumann Tim CosterMark HiltonShane HasemanGreatest HitsDan MoynihanJustene WilliamsAnnie Wu Brendan Van Hek

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REBECCA BAUMANN The artistRebecca Baumann is an artist from Perth. She creates temporary installations and sculptures made with materials such as coloured smoke, confetti, balloons and streamers. Her work is often activated either by machines or audience participation.

What art does the artist make?Baumann investigates the role of happiness, celebration and spectacle. Her work provokes genu-ine delight and awe, however she is also challenging the audience to question why and how excessive amounts of party materials affect us.

What art will she make for the exhibition?For New11, Baumann has begun to examine colour and the affect and reactions it has on our emotions. She has created an installation made from 100 flip clocks, replacing the numbered cards with blocks of colour. The clocks faces still move in time, but with the numbers gone, the colours represent emotional changes over time.

How do different colours make you feel?

What colour reflects your mood today?

Rebecca Baumann. Confetti Interna-tional 2007past work

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TIM COSTERThe artistOriginally from New Zealand, Tim Coster now lives in Melbourne. He practices mainly as a sound artist, and exhibits his work in galleries, online and within three bands. Coster creates delicate sound works that incorporate field recordings and other gathered musical sounds, which are then processed by computer and digital/analogue looping devices.

What art does the artist make?The sound installations that Coster makes are site specific, which means that he intentionally makes them for the space they are exhibited in. He responds to the site’s architecture and creates music that he imagines reflects the sound characteristics of the materials the space is made of.

What art will he make for the exhibition?For NEW11, Coster looked at the architecture of ACCA to create a sound environment in the en-try and foyer spaces. He made a field recording of rain and digitally manipulated it. It is amplified by ACCA’s glass windows, and can be heard in and out the space, 24hours a day.

What sort of sound characteristics do you think the ACCA building would have?

Delicate, quiet, smooth sounds? Loud, deep, sharp sounds? What sounds and instruments could you use to make them?

Tim Costerpast work ACCA foyer

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MARK HILTON The artistMelbourne artist Mark Hilton uses drawing, painting, sculpture, installation and video in his work. The style and mediums of his work are ever-changing as he employs various traditional, historical and cultural techniques and styles, such as medieval frescoes, ancient Persian court painting and Chinese coffin-lid carving.

What art does the artist make?Hilton explores the negative, tragic and conflicting side of contemporary Australian culture. He ex-amines darkness in humanity and where our morals and ethics are learned. His use of beautiful, intricate detail hides the horror and atrocity within Hilton’s work. “My work rewards closer inspec-tion,” he says.

What art will he make for the exhibition?For NEW11 Hilton looks at the changing role of community in Australia today. He has created en-gine oil paintings and highly detailed sculptures all depicting trees. He portrays stereotyped char-acters from all walks of life and challenges the viewer to look closely and consider the dark side of our culture.

What news stories have you heard recently that worried or concerned you?

How would you depict them in an artwork?

Mark Hilton’s Knackers 2006past work

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SHANE HASEMANThe artistBorn in Geelong, Shane Haseman lives in Sydney, where he works as an artist, writer and university lecturer. Haseman uses painting, sculpture and installation and appropriates the visual styles of early 20th century historical art movements.

What art does the artist make?Haseman is interested in art history and theory, such as the Russian Constructivists. They used their art to express political messages about Communism. Today, their same visual imagery and symbols are used in our everyday life, but the political message is gone.

What art will he make for the exhibition?For NEW11, Haseman will create a room installation of wall paintings and a bicycle, showing the bold geometric shapes from Russian Constructivism. He examines how our contemporary culture uses the same design elements, but that their political symbolism has now disappeared. There is no message in Haseman’s symbols. Instead they decorate every day objects such as bedspreads and clothing.

Cut out different bold geometric shapes from flags. Use them to create designs for every day objects.

Do they still have the same identity or symbolism?

Shane Haseman, Sympathy for the Devil, 2009past work

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GREATIST HITSThe artistsGreatest Hits is a group of Melbourne based artists - Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McG-linn. Formed in 2008, they produce video, sculpture, installation, photography and publications.

What art do the artists make together?Greatest Hits often use random, displaced objects from everyday life. These are placed in the gallery space to surprise and amuse the audience. In past works, Greatest Hits have sealed the gallery door with plaster, forcing the audience to enter through a cubbyhole.

What art will he make for the exhibition?For NEW11, Greatest Hits researched alien images on the Internet and gave them to an ice sculp-tor. The ice sculptor created their own interpretation of extraterrestrial life based on the images. Greatest Hits have displayed their alien in a freezer in the exhibition.

Greatest Hits didn’t make the ice sculpture themselves. They let the ice sculptor decide what it would look like.

Should the ice sculptor be credited as one of the artists?

What is the role of the artist?

Greatest Hits tbc, 2010past work

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DAN MOYNIHAN The artistDan Moynihan grew up in Wollongong, and lives in Melbourne. Before studying art, he started a carpentry apprenticeship, and uses his skills to construct large sculptures and installations.

What art does the artist make?Moynihan loves puns, cheap humour and gags, using pranks and subtle wit to make jokes on himself and the audience. His love of comedy extends into films, as he recreates scenes and uses installation space to create exciting narrative journeys for the audience to participate in. Moynihan also uses scale to amplify the comedy in his work. Sometimes he creates life size dummies of himself, or a miniature world inside a suitcase or gigantic novelty ‘Groucho glasses’.

What art will he make for the exhibition?For NEW11, Moynihan leads the inquisitive viewer through a journey of spaces to an abandoned tropical utopia. A false corridor in the exhibition space leads to the cleaner’s cupboard door and the audience must decide if they wish to find out what’s behind the door. Beyond the cleaner’s cupboard Moynihan has created a circular paradise room with a tropical island in the centre. There is sand, a small body of water, a palm tree and a skeleton, surrounded by brightly coloured walls and warm lights.

What could you create in a parallel world?

Would it be a utopia or a dystopia?

Dan Moynihan, Escape From New Work, 2010past work

BRENDAN VAN HEK

The artistPerth based artist Brendan Van Hek uses neon light works, drawings and sculptural instal-lations to investigate race, religion and masculinity. He explores how these issues might shape and form identity.

What art does the artist make?In large scale works, Van Hek works with the elemental properties of materials such as bronze, glass and mirrors expanding or cancelling out their symbolism.In his work ‘Can we be together?’ (2010) mirrors are painted white and no longer reflect.

What art will he make for the exhibition?For NEW11, Van Hek has created ‘The person who cried a thousand tears,’ a work consisting of mirrors, glass and disco balls. By changing the material’s original function he examines ideas around dishonesty and illusion, fictions and trickery, invented histories and influenced truths.

Think of an object in your classroom. What is it used for and what sorts of things does it make you think of?

What things could you change about the object that would alter its use and what you thought of it?

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Brendan van HekDaydreamer, 2009 past work

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JUSTENE WILLIAMS The artistPhotographer and video artist Justene Williams lives in Sydney. Her dance training and a short career in cabaret helped inspire her ongoing interest in movement and gesture.

What art does the artist make?Williams has an ongoing interest in movement, choreography and photography. In recent years her video practice has expanded to include sound and lighting, movement and cos-tume, photographs and temporary sculptural elements, often built specifically for the camera.

What art will she make for the exhibition?For NEW11, Williams presents a series of video works that document the artist costumed and performing. Her costumes are made from the torn up paper of newspapers, cardboard tubes, and hundreds of her own photographs. The choreography is absurd, sometimes manic and often repetitive, with sounds of the paper fluttering with the movements.

Think of a character. Create a costume and choreograph a dance, then perform it for your class.

Justene Williamshouse/boat problemstill, 2010past work

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ANNIE WU The artistAnnie Wu was born in Shanghai and moved to Melbourne at age 7. She currently lives in the Netherlands. She is interested in how knowledge can be exchanged through art, and works with wearable art, publications, performance and installations.

What art does the artist make?In past works, Wu has tested the idea of the publication as an art tool creating posters and publications.

What art will she make for the exhibition?For NEW11, Wu is re-publishing ‘The New Australian Newspaper’, first published in the1890’s. Two palettes, with 10,000 copies of the paper will be available for the audience to take away, bringing the paper back into circulation and examining the notion of ‘new’.

The ‘New Australian Movement’ was founded in 1892 by William Lane, who wanted to create a socialist utopia, and resulted in 238 Australians resettling in Paraguay. Fighting amongst the settlers led to splits in the settlement, with many of the settlers returning to Australia.

Make a mind map with possibilities of things that could happen once peo-ple get a copy of Annie Wu’s newspaper.

What might they think, or do with it?

Annie Wupast work

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FIONA ABICAREThe artistFiona Abicare lives and works in Melbourne. She works as an artist and also a sculpting techni-cian for artists, filmmakers and architects. She uses lots of different mediums, working collab-oratively, and is interested in art, design, performance and how art is documented.

What art does the artist make?Instead of treating the gallery/museum as a site to show her artworks, she considers the space as an art object in itself and fills it with visual props focusing on colour, shape, form, texture and materials.

What art will she make for the exhibition?For NEW11, Abicare worked with Dan Moynihan and Justene Williams to create installations based on their work. She staged a performance in Moynihan’s paradise room, with two women wearing costumes influenced by his work. She photographed the work and exhibits it on a white tiled wall. She created a small table to show William’s work,with photographic images and fashion attire based on the video work.

Look at an art work made by one of your friends. How could you turn it into a performance for your class?

Could you make some wearable art from the idea?

Fiona AbicareCovers2008past work

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Colour SymbolismLevels 1-3 The Arts-Creating and Making/ English-Speaking and ListeningLook at Rebecca Baumann’s work.Discuss the symbolism of colours and the meanings they have in different cultures. Create a collage on paper with images, textures and different media in a chosen colour. Exhibit work collectively, creating a large scale visual and ask students to feedback on what the different colours express.

Miniature Journey Levels 2-4 English- Writing/The Arts- Creating and MakingLook at Dan Moynihan’s work.Write a narrative focusing on a journey through a parallel world, taking the reader through spaces that emote different feelings- anxiety, hope, curiosity, surprise. Design and create a diorama of the story, using a cardboard box and dividing the spaces to take the viewer through the journey.

Shared image making Levels 3-4 Interpersonal Learning/ The Arts/ Thinking ProcessesLook at Greatest Hits work.Use the Internet to collect images of something you are interested in. Decide what kind of material you would like your artwork to be made with. Give your collected images to another student to use in creating your image for you. Present the finished work to your class, and discuss the role of the artist, and what art is.

AppropriationTo adopt, borrow, recycle or sample something from man-made visual culture.

ChoreographyThe art of creating and arranging dances

CollaborateTo work with one or more people.

CuratorThe person in charge of managing and arranging an art exhibition.

InstallationSite-specific, three-dimensional artworks, that can be temporary or permanent.

Materiality The qualities of a material.

MediumThe materials used in a specific artistic technique.

Field recording Recording of sound made outside.

UtopiaAn ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects.

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