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Description:
Innovators 4 Linden 1968

Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts
St Kilda
Melbourne
Australia

INNOVATORS 4 - LINDEN1968
8 November - 14 December 2008
curated by Hannah Mathews & Ben Riding
Opening 6-8pm Friday 7 November
West coast artists revisit the past and fill the rooms of Linden with the spirit of '68
1968 was a year that changed the world.... the end of the American dream with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and Bobby Kennedy .... the loss of a Prime Minster as Harold Holt was officially declared missing.... and of course a simultaneous movement of rebellion and revolt in countries throughout the world.
Linden1968 is a major multi-arts survey exhibition that profiles both emerging and established WA-based artists to an interstate audience. It is also a performative exhibition, based entirely in the year 1968! It will be held at Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, St Kilda, 8 November - 14 December 2008.
Artists include: Rebecca Baumann, Aidan Broderick, Marcus Canning, Thea Costantino, Annabel Dixon, EricaAmerica, Caspar Fairhall, Pamela Gaunt, Rodney Glick & Lynnette Voevodin, Brendan van Hek & Consuelo Cavaniglia, Bevan Honey, Matthew Hunt, Laura Johnson, Shannon Lyons, Pilar Mata Dupont & Tarryn Gill, Bennett Miller, Tom Muller & Rochelle Phillips, Tony Nathan, Poppy van Orde Grainger, Simon Pericich, Ben Riding, Kevin Robertson and diode, Bruce Slatter, Eli Smith, Justin Smith, Ric Spencer & Peter McCaughey.
The exhibiting artists will respond to a creative and tight curatorial brief: to devise works and strategies within Linden's interior and exterior spaces that will reshape, transform and comment on the site's previous function as a private guest house in the year 1968. Each artist has been asked to consider the significant events that marked 1968 in their creative response to the site; and the results include a crashed Apollo 7 satellite, protest cars and prime ministerial portraits, with carved vinyl records, a life-size bodhisattva figure and Robert Smithson cave.
Facing geographical limitations, Western Australian artist's work can often be characterized by an ambitious and inquiring interest into the world around us and our relationship to each other. This isolation allows a freedom from influence that in turn permits the production of truly original, radical and unorthodox art. There is also a sense of experimentation and hybridity as visual artists often adopt performative modes within their practice. The model of Linden1968 is a perfect fit for these artists as it is conceptually complex yet wide open to interpretation, offering an opportunity for the playful and improvised.
Linden1968 will open on Friday 7 November with a soiree of sorts; visitors will be checked in before touring the hotel and encountering appropriately tuned performances, readings, happening and displays of all kinds. The exhibition will continue after the opening night as a document to the existence of the hotel and its life in St Kilda, and will be accompanied by a significant project publication taking the form of a revised 1968 issue of the Australian National Geographic.
This publication will include commissioned essays by Robert Cook, Rebecca Dean, Andrew Gaynor and Marco Marcon, along with a variety of articles and imagery from the artists and curators.
For interviews, images or further information please contact
Jan Duffy on 9209 6794 or info@lindenarts.org