The Museum Contemporary Art Australia’s iconic Artbar is back! Join us on Friday 1 September 2023, for Artbar Spring, a one-of-a-kind evening curated by Primavera artist and Quandamooka woman Elisa Jane Carmichael.
Featuring DJs, live music, roaming performances, multi-sensory experiences and hands-on activities across all levels of the Museum, the spring edition of Artbar celebrates First Nations artists, Country, and our connection to nature.
Enjoy music and dance on the rooftop and take advantage of the opportunity to experience the Museum’s galleries after-dark, including free entry to our major winter exhibition Zoe Leonard: Al río / To the River.
Participating artists include:
Christopher Bassi, Otis Carmichael, Sonja Carmichael, Kylie Caldwell, Cerulean, Crescendoll, DJ Naian, Ensayos, Norton Fredricks, Dennis Golding, Libby Harward, Maanyung, Microwave Jenny and Lucy Simpson
This is an aged 18+ event on 1 September 2023, from 7.00pm to 10:30pm.
Ticket price
General admission $45
MCA Member $36
Concession $36
Purchase tickets
Access support
The MCA welcomes all visitors and is committed to making its programs and services accessible to everyone. Read our visual story for information on how to access the Museum during ARTBAR and to help you plan your visit in advance. This step-by-step guide is designed for people with access requirements. Contact the MCA reception for free Access support on +61 2 9245 2400 or email mail@mca.com.au.
MEET THE CURATOR AND ARTISTS
Curator, Elisa Jane Carmichael.
Quandamooka woman Elisa Jane Carmichael is a multidisciplinary artist. Carmichael honours her saltwater heritage by incorporating materials collected from Country, embracing traditional techniques, and expressing contemporary adaptations through painting, weaving, and textiles. Coming from a family of artists and curators, Carmichael works closely with her female kin to revive, nurture, and preserve cultural knowledge and practice.
Carmichael is a descendant of the Ngugi people, one of three clans who are the traditional custodians of Quandamooka, also known as Yoolooburrabee—people of the sand and sea. Quandamooka Country comprises the waters and lands of and around Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) and Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), south-east Queensland, Australia.
Christopher Bassi
Christopher Bassi is an artist of Meriam, Yupungathi and British descent. Working with archetypal models of representational painting, his work engages with the medium as sociological and historical text and as a means of addressing issues surrounding cultural identity, alternative genealogies, and colonial legacies in Australia and the South Pacific.
Through critical re-imagining, Bassi’s paintings become a space for a type of speculative storytelling that considers questions of history and place and the entangling of personal and collective identities. Bassi is represented by Yavuz Gallery Sydney/Singapore.
Bassi will be included in the MCA’s upcoming exhibition, Primavera 2023: Young Australian Artists.
Otis Carmichael
Otis Carmichael is a proud Waanyi man living on Yagera and Turrbul land.
Carmichael is interested in how food sovereignty relates to self-determination through ownership of native foodways
Sonja Carmichael
Sonja Carmichael is a Quandamooka woman from Mulgumpin/Moreton Island and Minjerribah/North Stradbroke Island, Queensland. She is of the Ngugi people, one of three clans who are the traditional custodians of Quandamooka, also known as Yoolooburrabee – people of the sand and sea.
Carmichael works specifically in the medium of fibre basketry and woven sculptures, informed by her family’s cultural connections to the land and seas of Quandamooka.
In her practice, Carmichael draws inspiration from the many stories connected to Quandamooka weaving, and also explores contemporary materials and techniques – in particular ‘ghostnets’ and fishing lines – that directly respond to concerns about the preservation of the natural environment.
Carmichael is a leader in the regeneration of Quandamooka weaving, passing on cultural knowledge and skills through workshops, exhibitions, and field research.
Kylie Caldwell
Kylie Caldwell is a Bundjalung weaver and fibre artist, interested in reviving and pursuing traditional cultural practices that her ancestors have used over thousands of years.
In her practice, Cadwell works to rediscover ancient Bundjalung crafts and thread them into the modern world, utilising various modes to deepen and expand her own cultural creative expression and knowledge.
Caldwell’s approach honours the ancient form, while bringing contemporary artistry to represent an enduring Bundjalung identity.
Crescendoll
Crescendoll is a Gamilaraay woman and Gadigal based DJ. Selected for FBi’s Dance Class 2020 program, she flirts with juke, jersey, footwork, hard drum, UK bass, garage and acid and is an appreciator of all things club. She is a regular on Eora’s dance floors and has played sets for outfits like Mince, Lefag, Athletica, Bizarro, Decay and Leak Your Own Nudes. She has also played Soft Centre, Pitch Music Festival, Splendour and Beyond the Valley.
DJ Naian
Born in Lismore NSW, Naian is a proud Bundjalung Aboriginal South Sea Islander man with an extensive background in community radio and arts, having been involved with the community radio sector for over 20+ years.
Graduate of NAISDA Dance College (Sydney), Moving Into Dance Mophatong Wa Thabo (Johannesburg), and The Australian Ballet School (Melbourne), Naian produces The Drift Zone Podcasts including The Drift Zone at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Fair Day 2021 available via Spotify.
In 2021, Naian founded The Current Motion, a volunteer online LGBTIQA+ Radio Station that broadcasts across Australia.
Currently Naian is producing the outLOUD Podcasts with Blackbooks, a division of Tranby Aboriginal Cooperative in Glebe, and fills the role of Indigitube Project Officer at First Nations Media Australia.
Ensayos
Ensayos is a collective research practice initiated by a group of artists and researchers in 2010 on the archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, which is located at the southern tip of Patagonia, Indigenous lands of the Selk’nam, Yaghan, Kawéskar and Haush peoples.
Ensayos (Spanish for ‘inquiries’, ‘essays’ or ‘rehearsals’) was initially focused solely on the eco-political issues impacting Tierra del Fuego and its inhabitants–past and present, human and nonhuman. Now, other archipelagos have come into view, with research “pods” growing in Norway, New York, and Australia. The mission of Ensayos is to expand eco-cultural conservation work in Tierra del Fuego and other archipelagos through collaborative art, science, and community projects in partnership with existing ecological and cultural conservation initiatives.
Ensayos will present The Gift of Scent during ARTBAR: Sharing Plants. The Gift of Scent is part of Turba Tol Hol-Hol Tol, a collective project led by curator Camila Marambio which raises awareness of peatlands and the importance of their preservation. Through scent, posters and poetry, Ensayos invites speculative dives into the depths of peatlands globally—sniffing and thinking with the hidden layers, stored matter, and interspecies relations that make them crucial sites of eco-cultural heritage.
Norton Fredericks
Norton Fredericks is a queer visual artist with mixed European and Indigenous heritage who lives and works on Kombumerri Country, Gold Coast.
Fredericks’ practice utilises natural botanical dyes and traditional wet felting methods while connecting to place and Country.
Fredericks was one of HoTA’s resident ArtKeepers in 2023 and has work acquired by the Museum of Brisbane.
Dennis Golding
Dennis Golding is a Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay artist and curator from the north-west of NSW and was born and raised on Gadigal Country (Sydney). Through his mother’s lineage, Golding has ancestral ties to Biripi country along the mid-north coast of NSW.
Growing up in an Aboriginal community in Redfern – often referred to as ‘The Block’ – Golding was surrounded by art from a young age. As a child, he watched his mother and grandmother paint native plants and animals, cultural motifs, and figures on large canvases and sheen fabrics.
Drawing from childhood memories and his experience living in urban environments, Golding works across painting, video, photography, and installation to critique the social, political, and cultural representation of contemporary Aboriginal cultural identity.
Libby Harward
A descendant of the Ngugi people of Mulgumpin (Moreton Island) in the Quandamooka, Libby Harward creates artworks that break through the colonial overlay to connect with the cultural landscape, which always was and always will be here. Harward’s political practice, in a range of genres, continues this decolonising process.
Harward describes her practice as a process of simultaneously listening, calling out to, knowing and understanding Country. Harward’s arts practice spans over twenty years, initially as a community, street and graffiti artist. During the past seven years, her focus has been on developing a conceptual arts practice, resulting in regular invitations to exhibit works both nationally and internationally. Major recent works include ALREADY OCCUPIED series on Yugambeh Country (Gold Coast), and DABIL BUNG (Broken Water) with First Nations along the Bidgee and Barka (Murray-Darling River system). These works engage a continual process of re-calling, re-hearing, re-mapping, and re-contextualising, to de-colonise, cultural landscapes, utilising low and high-tech media with elements of sound, image, installation and performance, to engage with politically-charged ideas of national and international significance.
Maanyung
Maanyung (Micheal Laurie) is a proud Aboriginal man with strong connections to the Gumbaynggir and Yaegl nations.
Maanyung had the honor of opening and closing the First Nations Runway at the Melbourne Fashion Festival in 2022. His music has been featured in the Needessentials Lost Track Atlantic Film Series and the Lost Track Atlantic Soundtrack by Headland. Maanyung has also performed as an opening act for acclaimed musician Kim Churchill, and his story was featured in the Koori Mail and The Guardian’s ‘Australia’s Best New Music’ segment. He has been interviewed on various prestigious radio stations and performed at notable events such as Dark MoFo. With his captivating talent, Maanyung continues to make a mark in the industry.
Microwave Jenny
Microwave Jenny features the sensational voice of songstress Tessa, supported by her guitarist Brendan.
Microwave Jenny have been featured on the hit Australian television series Gods of Wheat Street (ABC1) and Offspring (Channel 10). They have worked on soundtracks for Carlotta (ABC1) and the feature-film based on the Indigenous musical Bran Nue Dae.
They’ve toured across Australia, the UK and Taiwan, played The Woodford Folk Festival, The Dreaming Festival, The Adelaide Fringe Festival, Peats Ridge Festival, Festival of the Sun, AWME, Bluesfest in Byron Bay and The Aussie BBQ as part of The Great Escape in the UK and supported Sheppard on their Australian National Spring Tour 2015.
Lucy Simpson
Lucy Simpson is the creative director, designer, and maker behind Gaawaa Miyay, a First Nations process-led, studio-based practice inspired by Country, relationships, and notions of continuity, and exchange.
A graduate of UNSW Art and Design and current Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Technology Sydney, Simpson’s creative practice and research focuses on the continuing role of First Nations design as a tool and conduit to baayangalibiyaay / interconnected notions of wellbeing (people and place).
In 2015, Simpson was recognised by the Australian Design Centre as an honouree of Australian Design. Simpson has exhibited at museums, galleries, and institutions locally and abroad, as well as collaborating on a range of projects for theatre shows, festivals, and major venues across Sydney.
