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Melinda Rackham
artist ~ curator ~ writer

2015

award:
I'm delighted to be chosen to write the 2016 SALA Monograph on the iconic Catherine Truman. Although enduringly fond of intricately carving English Lime and Mother-of-Pearl, her oeuvre extends into performance, choreography, public sculpture, installation, photograph, poetry and moving image. I'm particularly interrested in drawing out the intersubjectivity of working immersively with scientists of many persuasions for 17 years, which has taken her makings into the sensate and anatomically unfamiliar – probing thresholds of human being. To be launched in August 2016!
  Bone in the Bag Catherine Truman, Bone in the Bag, Detail, 2002

local:

WIMP: Windows, Icons, Menus & Pointers
Five sweet 20 second stories in the language of computer and mobile screen icons. I've really enjoyed making these playful low resolution works: the nostalgia of an #earlyApple desktop contrasts with #lateWindows working day parade; #mobMe texts in icons of social media;  #screenFever flushes out the graphical creatures inhabiting our interface jungles; while #playTime points to pure entertainment.

You can watch them online or tweet them to the big  Rundle Lantern screen.








global:
Art of the Networked Practice | Online Symposium
Speaking with Ken Wark and Charlotte Frost on a panel at an international gathering exploring emergent forms of networked research, artistic production, and teaching in the arts. Intended as a global and inclusive gathering, without registration fees, this Symposium unites local and remote speakers and audiences via Web-conferencing to discuss a range of topics, including: distributed teaching and studio models, collective research, peer-to-peer cultural production, networked performance, big data cultural analytics, and a broad range of issues in Internet art & culture.

networked practcie


local :
Theatre of Detail
Here's my catalogue essay for the wonderful Theatre of Detail exhibition - new work by Gray Street workshop partners Jess Dare, Sue Lorraine and Catherine Truman, set to tour nationailly and internationally in 2015 and  2016. Launched at Gray Street Gallery on 5 March 2015.


global :
 -empyre-

Its great revisting -empyre- [soft-skinned space], the forum created as part of my PhD in 2002, to contribute to the February 2015 discussion New Year/ New Tools and Technologies.


2014
national:

Bundanon Trust Artist In Residence
my residency at Bundanon enables research and writing time for my first novel Attachment. This highly intimate memoir deals with issues of identity, loss and grief brought about by the traumatic separation at birth from my mother and my subsequent adoption, then the removal of my only child when I was 15, also through forced adoption.

home away
home away from home - the Musicians Cottage
at Bundanon

global :

see my 1996 net art work
tunnel (exploring the slimey arena of cybersex)
in the VAGINA 2.0, show at Vagina Museum, Vienna, Austria, from May 2014.



local:

visit The Microscope Project at  Flinders Art Museum & City Gallery at the State Library, Adelaide, Australia and read my catalogue essay Manifest De Stillare

Artists Nicholas Folland, Ian Gibbins, Deb Jones, Catherine Truman, and Angela Valamanesh reconstruct wonderful, surprising and intelligent artworks from decomissioned analogue microscopes.
Exhibition dates: 26 July - 21 September 2014

microscope
 
Website bysprout
subtle.net 2015 subtle | curatorial | creative | critique | cv + contact   

Active for over 20 years in the local, national and international media and contemporary arts arena, Melinda has extensive knowledge of art forms emerging in new and traditional technologies, such as e-literature, networked, distributed, responsive and mediated arts. As a pioneering Australian Internet artist - intertwining narratives of still and moving image, responsive code, sound and hypertext, Rackham exhibited her award winning net art sites and virtual worlds at major global festivals and biennales from 1995. In 2002 she established -empyre-, one of the world’s leading networked media arts and critical theory forums. Documenta XII published extensive discussions from -empyre-, and lively debate continues today under changing global editorial teams. Melinda was appointed inaugural Curator of Networked Art at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in 2003 where she curated Australia’s first major survey of Networked Art. Moving to South Australia in 2005, as Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT) until 2009, she widened opportunities and audiences for artists and writers working with Science and emerging technologies. More recently Dr Rackham was Adjunct Professor of Media and Communications at RMIT University and spent several periods curating moving image in public arenas and researching the cultural impact of media arts in China and Hong Kong. Melinda is currently reengaging with her personal creative practice, writing her memoir on identity formation in forced adoption and relations in online environments.