Floortalks | Melbourne Now – Mark Hilton, Penny Byrne, Nick Braun-Sibling

Floortalks | Melbourne Now – Mark Hilton, Penny Byrne, Nick Braun-Sibling

Penny Byrne, iProtest, 2013-2013, via National gallery of Victoria

Designer Floor Talk- Nick Braun, Sibling

SIBLING is a Melbourne design collective that works at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, cultural analysis and graphic communication to produce new and unexpected spatial outcomes. SIBLING’s approach insists on intelligent forms developed from a positive, socially engaged agenda. The practice is a network of eight people – Amelia Borg, Nicholas Braun, Jonathan Brener, Jessica Brent, Jane Caught, Qianyi Lim, Timothy Moore and Alan Ting – who are all trained in architecture and work actively across the globe. Additional fields of expertise include landscape architecture, graphic design, cultural studies and commerce.

The reading room designed by SIBLING for Melbourne Now occupies an interstitial or ‘in-between’ space at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. This room has been created to allow a moment of pause to ingest some of the wonderful independent publishing, graphic design and writing of Melbourne’s art, architecture and design communities. The room offers an insight into the broad array of local voices – ranging from independent bookshops to publishers and individuals – that are committed to the art of publishing and the power of the written word.

Friday 13th 12:30pm

Free – meet atIan Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square, Level 2, 

More info

Artist Floor Talk- Penny Byrne

Penny Byrne is both a visual artist of repute and a highly respected and sought-after ceramics conservator. Using techniques employed in her conservation work, Byrne creates contentious works of art from recycled mass-produced porcelain figurines and toys. Her often satirical modifications of these coy figurines are not obvious: by tinkering with their kitsch aesthetic Byrne creates a shock of the familiar being used in unexpected ways.

While at first iProtest, 2012–13, resembles a display of endearing souvenir-style figurines hanging on a wall, its potency is revealed on closer inspection. Each figurine is personalised with details relating to one of the many conflicts driven by mass protests around the world. Nationalism is referenced by faces painted with flags; acts of violence leave bodies dismembered and bloodied; and the cutest figurines are in fact riot police, wielding guns and dressed as clowns. The omnipresent symbol of Facebook is also ingeniously added to the work. Byrne’s crowd of modified figurines explores the way social media has become a significant tool for coordinating protests around the world.

Saturday 14th 12:30pm

Free – meet at Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square, Level 3, Foyer, Level 3

More info

Artist Floor Talk- Mark Hilton

Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1999, Mark Hilton has exhibited both locally and internationally in contemporary art spaces and artist-run initiatives. Working across drawing, painting, sculpture and video, the artist approaches the psychology of collective decision-making to determine and question ‘normal’ behavioural codes.

 dontworry, 2013, included in Melbourne Now, is the most ambitious and personal work Hilton has made to date. A dark representation of events the artist witnessed growing up in suburban Melbourne, this wall-based installation presents an unnerving picture of adolescent mayhem and bad behaviour. Extending across nine intricately detailed panels, each corresponding to a formative event in the artist’s life, dontworry can be understood as a deeply personal memoir that explores the transition from childhood to adulthood, and all the complications of this experience. Detailing moments of violence committed by groups or mobs of people, the installation revolves around Hilton’s continuing fascination with the often indistinguishable divide between truth and myth.

Sunday 15th 12:30pm 

Free – meet at NGV International, 180 St Kilda Road, Ground Level, Information Desk

More info