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WORKS

ART PROBLEMS








Art Problems





“A number of years ago I agreed to take part in a long term study of gambling practices in Victoria. I would get a phone call every six months or so asking me the same questions. While answering I thinakfully reflected I didn’t have a traditional gambling problem in the way they survey was targeting, but if they had been asking me about the financial risks I take being an artist I am certain I would have been scoring off the charts.

The pervading myths and stereotypes of the artist have always been economic whether they are starving in garrets or selling their work for outlandish prices – art is a con, seducing artists and the public alike with its snake oil charms of access to freedom, self-expression, genius, talent, unconventional lifestyles, beauty, taste, infamy and status.”







Art Problems 2020 Silk Screen Print on Calico 50x70mm
ART PROBLEMS has appeared in exhibitions in various formats prior to these affordable screen prints being printed by Spacecraft Studios in 2017 in an edition of 50 in 2020 with a new design and edition of 50. 

‘ART PROBLEMS’ EDITIONS FOR PURCHASE ︎︎︎   






WORKS

Performance Artist 4EVA︎








Performance Artist 4EVA︎





Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, this major new commission emerged from an invitation to unpack the rich repositories of the Performance Space archive.

ABOVE: PERFORMANCE ARTIST 4 EVA︎ - Silk scarf 65x65cms Fundraising commission for Performance Space 2023 Photo: Tania Vukicevic.



Oct 19 2023: PERFORMANCE ARTIST 4 EVA︎ - digital mural installed at Carraigeworks for Future40 @ Performance Space Liveworks Festival 2023. Photo: Document Photography courtesy of Performance Space.










Oct 19 2023: PERFORMANCE ARTIST 4 EVA︎ - digital mural installed at Carraigeworks for Future40 & Liveworks @ Performance Space Liveworks Festival 2023. Photo by Document Photography courtesy of Performance Space.



Performance Artist 4EVA︎
Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham for Performance Space 2023

‘Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories,’ wrote Walter Benjamin in Unpacking My Library (1931). Naarm-based artist Elvis Richardson is passionate about collecting and collections, creating installations that probe the ethics, politics and poetics of institutional collections as reconstituted artistic readymades. One of her landmark archive projects, the blog CoUNTess est. 2008, and since 2017 the collaborative project Countess Report publishes data on gender representation in the Australian contemporary art world as both art and advocacy using the language of institutional critique.

Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, this major new commission emerged from an invitation to Elvis Richardson to unpack the rich repositories of the Performance Space archive. Following an extensive creative research residency among these analogue and digital records, Elvis has created a site-specific wall work that celebrates and remembers generations of artists and their work. A celebration of our shared history, PERFORMANCE ARTIST 4EVA♡ unleashes a four-decade force of chaotic memories. It is a tribute to the mnemonic monuments comprising a history of creative experimentation and the evolving typographic styles that shape it.

Elvis says: ‘With this commission, I was keen to see what happens when each invitation, advertisement, poster and press release in the archive is treated like an ‘exquisite corpse’ of text and imagery connecting generations of legendary artists and their work. The images and word associations I am assembling from the PSpace goldmine of printed matter are impressed with the promises of so many incredible stories, and I want this work to exhibit the anticipation and bodily presence unique to performance.’

Text by Daniel Mudie Cunningham (from the Performance Space Website)





WORKS



FEMMO Issue 1, 2, 3 (2014) 4, 5, 6 (2015)


Virginia Fraser and Elvis Richardson
screen print on cotton 1400x1100mm


The artists Virginia Fraser and Elvis Richardson have adopted a curatorial pose to collaborate on a series of magazine covers, combining portraiture with attention-seeking headlines for a so-far fictional publication FEMMO™. Where other curators might select, arrange and present tangible and digital objects in galleries, the editors of FEMMO™ have organised indexical text objects on a (very big) page.

FEMMO™ promises articles its producers would like to read. FEMMO™ imagines a world where feminism is central to, and informs, every topic. In particular FEMMO™ has fun with the artworld’s gender biased status-quo. The National Library of Australia declined to issue FEMMO™ with an International Standard Serial Number because it had “no content”. FEMMO™ disagrees. FEMMO™ is joining the surface litter of Australian art history.















EXHIBITED

Femmo has been exhibited at The Dolls House (image above)

2017 Unfinished Business ACCA, Melbourne

2016 Vote for me! FORMAT, Adelaide
︎︎︎READ ARTLINK REVIEW BY ANDREW PURVIS

2016 Fremantle Print Prize (2nd prize), Fremantle Arts Centre
︎︎︎SEE PRIZE CATALOGUE

2016 Art for Social Change Incinerator Art Award, Incinerator Gallery, MooneePonds

2015 FEMMO™ solo @ Boxcopy, Brisbane

2015 Fremantle Print Prize (highly commended), Fremantle Arts Centre

2015 FEMMO™ solo @ Dollhouse, Melbourne

2014 Benglis 73/74 Sutton Project Space, Melbourne curated by Geoff Newton

2014 Curating Feminism Sydney College of the Arts Galleries & Contemporary Art and Feminism conference

RE-RAISING CONCIOUSNESS @ TCB Melbourne














FEMMO Issues 1,2,3 (2014) 4,5,6 (2015)
Virginia Fraser and Elvis Richardson
Silkscreen on cotton, 140x110cm.
Printed by Spacecraft.

Edition 1 issues 1,2,3,4,5,6 donated by Elvis Richardson to Sheila Foundation,
Edition 4 issues 1,2,4,5,6 donated by Elvis Richardson to Heide Museum of Art
Edition 5 issues 1,2,3,4,5,6 donated by Elvis Richardson to Art Gallery of Ballarat.   







WORKS 



Trophy Art






From melted trophies resilvered in The Impossibility of Losing in the Mind of Someone Winning 2008 to upscaled trophy embelishments in Rose Window awarded the 2014 ROI Art Prize and geometric trophy shapes rendered in aggregated polished pigmented concrete. The meanings and representations of the trophy remain of enduring interest.








































Trophy Art 2017 Cast polished concrete with aggregate
Rose Window 2014 c-type photograph awarded 2014 ROI Prize
Impossibility of losing in the mind of someone winning 2008, found metal trophies melted in a furnace then re-silverplated, dimensions variable Photo: Jenni Carter
Credits 2008 video 5 min
Slide Show Land installed at Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide
Trophy Art 2018 Cast polished concrete with aggregate
Impossibility of losing in the mind of someone winning 2008, found metal trophies melted in a furnace then re-silverplated, dimensions variable Photo: Jenni Carter











WORKS




Artist Lifestyle 2018






Artist Lifestyle presents machine style, hand painted, enamel on aluminum, for shiny, capitalist marketing promises, both a sales pitch and a word of warning, depending on the target audience. Is the artist lifestyle for you? Anagrams of Artist Lifestyle feature on each panel and together mysteriously unpack a hidden truthfulness, underlying expectations and assumed promises within its self referential reshuffled letters.


The words generated seem to speak directly to the contested social and economic value of art and the role of being an artist today. Artist lifestyle questions how personal, civic and national identity are formulated around artistic acts, objects and events.



Artist Lifestyle has been exhibited at:

Force Fields 2018 Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennale 2018
︎︎︎READ PDF CATALOG ESSAY BY MELINDA RACKHAM

True Estate @ Counihan Gallery Moreland Council 2018

True Estate @ Knulp Sydney 2019

Word @ Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide 2019








 







©elvisrichardson