Interview

Susan L. Aberth is the Edith C. Blum Professor of the Art History and Visual Culture Program at Bard College. She received her M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and her Ph.D. from the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

In addition to her 2004 book Leonora Carrington: Surrealism, Alchemy and Art (Lund Humphries), forthcoming is  Leonora Carrington: The Tarot (Fulgur Press, 2020) co-authored with Mexican curator Tere Arcq.  She has contributed to Surrealism and Magic, Guggenheim Venice (2021); Seeking the Marvelous: Ithell Colquhoun, British Women and Surrealism (Fulgur Press, 2021), Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist (Phoenix Art Museum, 2019), Juanita Guccione: Otherwhere (Napa Valley Museum, 2019), Surrealism, Occultism and Politics: In Search of the Marvelous (Routledge Press, 2018), Leonora Carrington: Cuentos Magicos (Museo de Arte Moderno & INBA, Mexico City, 2018), Unpacking: The Marciano Collection (Delmonico Books, Prestel, 2017), and Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde (Manchester University Press, 2017), as well as to Abraxas: International Journal of Esoteric Studies, Black Mirror, and Journal of Surrealism of the Americas.

Artist and Curator of the Every Woman Biennial: C. Finley, based in New York City and Rome, is known for her elaborate paintings and intense use of color, monumental murals, multi-disciplinary collaborations, and her activism through urban art interventions, including her acclaimed Wallpapered Dumpsters.

As the creator of the 2014-2021 Every Woman Biennial she exhibited over 1200 female and non-binary artists in New York, Los Angeles and London.

The book mentioned in the interview was At Certain Points We Touch by Lauren John Joseph.

Kevin O’Brien is a Brisbane based architect. In 2018 he joined BVN as a Principal, becoming part of one of Australia’s largest and most highly acclaimed architectural practices. In 2017 he became the Professor of Creative Practice at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. He is a former Board member of La Boite Theatre, and the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane.

Kevin is passionate about the arts. He collaborates broadly within the visual and performing arts sector as well as his creating his own works. He has produced set designs for Queensland Theatre Company, La Boite Theatre and Moogahlin Performing Arts, and installations for Urban Theatre Projects, Bleach Festival, the Sydney Festival and QAGOMA. Exhibition designs have been completed for the National Gallery of Australia, the National Museum of Australia, the Queensland Museum, the Institute of Modern Art, and the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Of specific significance is the Finding Country project that began in 2005 and continues to this day as a guide for practice, teaching and thinking about architecture and its relationship with the Aboriginal concept of Country. In 2012 this endeavour took the form of the Finding Country Exhibition as an official collateral event of the 13^th Venice Architectural Biennale. The central artefact of the exhibition was an 8m x 3m drawing of Brisbane containing 44 grids emptied by 50% to reveal an argument for the form of Country. The drawing was burnt on the opening night as a performative act demonstrating fire as a tool of Country.

Kevin’s current focus is on the development and demonstration of a Designing with Country methodology that seeks to locate people in settings that enable a sense of belonging to (as opposed to owning) Country.

An-My Lê lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Lê received her BA from Stanford University and a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art. She is the Charles Franklin Kellogg and Grace E. Ramsey Kellogg Professor in the Arts at Bard College, New York, where she has taught since 1999. In addition to her survey exhibition, On Contested Terrain, traveling in the US, she has had solo exhibitions at the MK Gallery, Milton Keynes (England) and Museum aan de Stoom (Belgium) in 2014; Baltimore Museum of Art in 2013; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art / SFMOMA in 2008; Dia:Beacon in 2006-07; and MoMA PS1 Contemporary Arts Center in 2002.

As a teenager Lê fled Vietnam with her family in 1975. They eventually settled in the US as refugees. Her work often addresses the impact of war on culture and on the environment. Lê says her “main goal is to try to photograph landscape in such a way that it suggests a universal history, a personal history, a history of culture.”

Lê is the recipient of numerous awards and grants: in 2012 she was awarded the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship; in 2010, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award; in 2007, the National Science Foundation, Antarctic Artists and Writers Program Award; in 2004 the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship; and in 1997 the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship.

The exhibition, đô-mi-nô, runs from 24 June – 20 August 2021 at Marian Goodman Gallery New York (24 W 57 Street, New York, NY 10019). For further information, please contact the gallery at (212) 977-7160.

David Daut Makala is a self-taught artist born in 1983 Lusaka, Zambia. Makala is known for his  versatility with materials manifesting in sculpture, painting, printmaking, digital art and performance. He considers his studio practice a form of research space where thoughts and ideas gather resulting in exquisite pieces of art.  For David, the processes involved in production also allow for greater interrogations in themes such as “Identity politics and mapping”. Makala  works from his studio in Chilenje which he purposely chose as a way of working with the  community. His works are part of the collection at the renowned Lechwe Trust and Chaminuka Lodge collections.

He has participated in numerous exhibitions and art fairs such at the FNB Johannesburg Fair.