MELISSA LAING
Open Studio
Saturday July 20, 2013 5 - 8pm-ish
Melissa Laing has been spending her time in The Rumpus Room thinking
about New Zealand's relationship to Australia. Particularly how it is
perceived by New Zealand's current prime minister John Key who, like a
ten year old kid, constantly declares to his older neighbour 'I want to
grow up to be just like you'. In chasing his role model his National
Party government recently passed the Immigration Amendment Bill enabling
mandatory detention of asylum seekers based on their method of travel
and size of arrival group.
For the open studio Laing will take over the neighbouring empty field, through a sculptural intervention in an attempt
to understand the consequences of being a country that fears the
uninvited. In the Rumpus Room itself will be a collaboration between
Melissa Laing and Ashlee Laing. Working together for the first time,
with the assistance of Dagmara Gleysztor and Paula Binnie, they have
created a new video performance. This new work brings together both
artists' continuing investigation into the politics of nationalism,
identity and place.
Melissa Laing is an artist, theorist and curator based in New Zealand.
Her work explores ideas of belonging and national identity, (in)security
discourses, and migration through the intersection of art and theory.
As an artist she works across video, installation, performance and
conceptual writing. She received her PhD from the Sydney College of the
Arts, University of Sydney in 2008 and has exhibited widely including at
Westspace in Melbourne, Performance Space in Sydney, Mercer Union in
Toronto, Canada, Kulturzentrum Schlachthof in Bremen, Germany, the Museu
de Arte Contemporãnea do Ceará in Fortaleza Ceará, Brazil and the
Physics Room in Christchurch, New Zealand
Ashlee Laing is an artist based in Melbourne. Laing works in
photo-media, video, installation, painting and performance. His practice
is concerned with the location of the individual and of the collective
with socio-cultural spaces. New work sees Laing playing with current
political rhetoric in an attempt to confront the audience with the
ingrained cultural fear and bigotry that seems deeply etched into the
Australian landscape, constitution and psyche. He completed a BVA at
Sydney College of the Arts in 1996, and is currently a Master of
Contemporary Art candidate at the Victorian College of the Arts.
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