There will be and Introduction to works associated with Contour 556 at CMAG and in Civic Square with Senior Curator Virginia Rigney and Neil Hobbs, Contour 556 Director. Also, artist performances in Civic Square from 3.30pm with the Pop Inn bar on site for the afternoon/evening.

Chair and introduction Virginia Rigney Senior Curator CMAG

Session 1: Legacies
Speakers:
Elspeth Pitt, Curator National Gallery of Australia
Lara Nicholls, PhD candidate Australian National University
Bruce Reynolds, participating artist Sculpture ‘75
Stephen Jones, video and media artist and curator

Canberra has a history of being the stage for the presentation of challenging contemporary art practice in the public domain. A panel of artists and curators review the legacy and significance of some of these projects including Australia ’75 and the parallel program Sculpture 75, Acts I II III, a series of performance and public participatory art events instigated and organised by Ingo Kleinert and Diana Ashcroft Johnson from 1978 to 1982 and the National Sculpture Forums of 1995 and 1998. With much of this past work ephemeral and loosely documented, the forum is an opportunity to refresh our appreciation of the ambitions and impacts of these works.

Session 2: Futures
Speakers:
Alex Wisser, Creative Director Cementa
Michael Jasper, Architect
Contour 556 artists Richard Lewer and Megan Cope

The panel reflects on the challenges and importance of delivering a regional contemporary art festival, the new fashion for temporary pavilions as ‘architectural art’ and some of the considerations for artists on making their work and exhibiting in temporary art events. What have been the impacts on the growing climate of risk aversion and the uncertain culture of the pandemic changing what temporal art projects can say. Will ambitious temporal contemporary art events survive?

Image: 

Stan Ostoja-Kotkowski  b.1922 d. 1994
Laser Chromasonic Tower Mark III
Commission for Australia ’75
Civic Square Canberra
Photograph John Hamilton CMAG Resource Archive