Congratulations to Simone Douglas and Shoufay Derz for their involvement in Art Anywhere? – a Symposium and Exhibition Launch hosted by Buxton Contemporary in Melbourne.

Today, much artistic activity takes place well outside the limits of traditional exhibition circuits. Much of this activity is more concerned with events, actions, sites, relations and processes rather than discretely exhibitable objects. Moreover, given that some artistic projects can exist as radically spatially diffused distributions of elements, artists and audiences alike can face significant challenges associated with adequately presenting, disseminating and evaluating work of this kind.

This one-day symposium will explore various ways in which artistic projects such as these might be represented and evaluated in their often-uneven transition from conception through production to dissemination (and after-life). Comprising a series of short presentations, performances and discussions featuring the work of artists, curators and other creative practitioners working well beyond the limits of established exhibition formats, this symposium event will explore dynamic contemporary artistic practices at the outermost limits of location-specificity.

This event is curated by Simone Douglas (Parsons School for Design, New York City) and Sean Lowry (VCA, Melbourne), as part of an ongoing partnership between the Centre of Visual Art (University of Melbourne) and Parsons Fine Art (Parsons School of Design, The New School).

Shoufay Derz has also been invited to present a talk at the Symposium, titled ‘In Memory of Water: Towards a Poetry of the Unimagined’.

Shoufay Derz is interested in both the limits and possibilities of language and the ambiguities faced when attempting to visually articulate the edges of the unknown. Deeply engaged with poetry her projects attempt to link the silences in language with holes in the landscape to contemplate the disappearance of history and also the uncertainties of the landscape of the future. Derz will focus on two projects that address the transformative possibilities, impossibilities and risks of storytelling. First, “In memory of water: 無Mu” is an installation that speculates on possibility of memorialisingthe loss of imagination. And second, the experimental pedologicalproject“Ritual for the Death of the Reef” performed at The UQ – Heron Island Research Station in collaboration with architect Amaia Sanchez [Grandeza Studio] and UTS Masters of Architecture students. The presentation will propose a future reimagining of the ‘ritual’ with an assembly of peers across creative fields to speculate on some of the following questions: Will the GBR die? If so, is there a chance for an afterlife? What role can ritual and imagination play in the fate of the biosphere? The elegiac artworks are intended simultaneously as a lament on the transience of life, and as a celebration of its mystery.

Shoufay will present alongside Ryo Sato, Yhonnie Scarce and Lisa Radford, Archie Barry, Nancy Mauro-Flude, Rowan McNaught, Emily Siddons, Kim Donaldson, Mark Shorter , Ry Haskings Vincent Alessi, and Shan Turner-Carroll.