Melissa Laing romps The Rumpus Room

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.