ACMI joins international cohort of arts organisations at Unfinished Camp

ACMI is delighted to join nine leading international arts institutions at Unfinished Camp this month–a network dedicated to building a healthy and equitable civil society for the digital age.

Each institution has invited three young artists to create new video works exploring the question, what is the future of art in a decentralised world?

ACMI has commissionedAustralian artists Moorina Bonini, Kalanjay Dhir and Jazz Money to share their take on what the world could look like.Their works will be shown online inACMI’s virtual exhibition space,Gallery 5, from 24 September –19 December.

The works will also be seen internationally at Unfinished Camp's inaugural exhibit at the House of Electronic Arts in Basel on September 23rd and at The Shed in New York on September 24.

In total, 27 emerging artists from Botswana to Brazil have been chosen to participate in Unfinished Camp by global arts institutions at the forefront of visual art, digital innovation, and technology. Alongside ACMI, the House of Electronic Arts and The Shed, founding partners include: LUMA Arles in Southern France; Pivô in São Paulo; the Serpentine Galleries in London; UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing; The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MoCAA) in Cape Town; and The High Line in New York.

ACMI Director and CEO Katrina Sedgwick OAM said: “We are honoured to be a part of this new international network of arts organisations that is championing and supporting young, emerging artists from five continents to provoke and challenge us as we look to build a more equitable future.”

ACMI First Nations Curator, Kate Ten Buuren said: “Jazz, Moorina and Kal have all thoughtfully responded to the question by sharing their unique perspectives as young artists living on unceded Aboriginal land, thinking deeply about the future. They see through the façade of our current society and the technologies that are rapidly changing our lives. Through their video works they invite us to rethink centralised systems and restore relationships between ourselves, the land and the stories that exist in deep time.”

Unfinished Camp was conceived by curator and artistic director ofLondon’sSerpentine GalleriesHans Ulrich Obrist and author and cultural strategy advisor Andras Szántóof Unfinished-an enterprise dedicated to strengthening civil life in the digital age.

Obrist and Szántó said: "We see this alliance as an opportunity to demonstrate new ways of working in the arts, with arts organisations collaborating across borders and professional boundaries to promulgate new ideas and action.”

The alliance, which spans five continents, was developed with the conviction that artists have a valuable role to play in shaping perceptions of our collective digital future, and our modes of public engagement in it.

Works from the three ACMI commissioned artists at Unfinished Camp screen online on ACMI’s Gallery 5 from 24 September –19 December. To access visit acmi.net.au

For more information about Unfinished Camp, including a full list of participants, visit unfinished.com/camp.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

ABOUT UNFINISHED

Unfinished was founded by Frank McCourt in 2020 out of rising concern over our deteriorating social fabric. Unfinished works to strengthen civic life in the digital age, focusing on three challenges: redirecting technology, especially social media, to fuel collaboration over division; renewing and strengthening civic institutions to accelerate inclusive problem-solving; and growing a fairer economy.

ABOUT ACMI

ACMI is Australia’s national museum of screen culture.The museum reopened in February after a two-year, $40 million redevelopment –an architectural, programmatic and technological transformation.Navigate the universe of film, TV, videogames and art with us. ACMI celebrates the wonder and power of the world’s most democratic art form –fostering the next generation of makers, players and watchers. ACMI’s vibrant calendar of exhibitions, screenings, commissions, festivals, and industry and education programs explore the stories, technologies and artists that create our shared screen culture. More at acmi.net.au

ABOUT MOORINA BONINI

Moorina Bonini is a proud descendant of the Yorta Yorta Dhulunyagen family clan of Ulupna and the Yorta Yorta and Wurundjeri-Woiwurrung Briggs/McCrae family. Moorina is an artist whose works are informed by her experiences as an Aboriginal and Italian woman. Her practice is driven by a self-reflexive methodology that enables the reexamination of lived experiences that have influenced the construction of her cultural identity. By unsettling the narrative placed upon Aboriginal people as a result of colonisation of Aboriginal Australia, Bonini’s practice is based within Indigenous Knowledge systems and brings this to the fore.

ABOUT KALANJAY DHIR

Kalanjay Dhir is an artist based in Sydney on unceded Dharug Land. He has made work about rivers, games, space technology, sci-fi, myth, social media, Mountain Dew, urban development, progress and time. Working with sculpture, video and internet objects, Dhir is interested in near-futurism and spirituality through mythological and speculative technologies. In his spare time he enjoys reading manga and imagining what things would look like if they were built with a secular devotion. In 2021, Dhir is developing new video works commissioned by Fairfield City Museum and Gallery and the Sydney Opera House.

ABOUT JAZZ MONEY

Jazz Money is an award-winning poet of Wiradjuri heritage, currently based on beautiful sovereign Gadigal land. Her practice is centred around the written word while producing works that encompass installation, digital, film and print. Jazz is a trained filmmaker and also works as an arts worker, artist, educator and researcher, with a particular interest in working with First Nations artists and communities to realise digital projects. In 2020 Jazz was awarded the David Unaipon Award from the State Library of Queensland and a First Nations Emerging Career Award from the Australian Council for the Arts. Her debut book ‘how to make a basket’ is forthcoming in 2021 with University of Queensland Press.