Greater Together

By Chelsea Cucinotta

Artists ask how we can live and work together better in this new group exhibition.

In Greater Together, the latest exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Arts (ACCA), eight artist projects explore the concepts of collaboration and cooperation as means of artistic agency and solidarity.

The exhibition presents various forms of collaboration, and considers the broader meaning of communication on both artistic and global scales.

Highlights from the exhibition include Goldin+Senneby, a framework set up by Swedish artists Simon Goldin and Jakob Senneby, which sees a full-scale mature oak tree installed in the gallery.

Exhibition curator Annika Kristensen said: “Goldin and Senneby’s project Standard Length of a Miracle takes the form of a text, an oak tree, work uniforms by ACCA’s gallery attendants that have been fashioned from clothes left behind at dry-cleaning stores, and a series of furnishings made from offcuts from the tree over the course of the exhibition.”

In another project, Dutch collaborators and partners Bik Van der Pol bring together a number of voices, as they use Plato’s philosophical Symposium to consider community responses to the challenge of climate change.

Field Theory will convert ACCA into a survivalist storeroom and explore how the skills of niche Melbourne clubs could be used to work together in the event of an apocalypse.

According to Kristensen, these artists have not only collaborated with each other in their eight given projects, but with writers, actors, and special interest groups around Melbourne.

There is also a ninth project titled WORK/SHOP drawing on themes of authorship, production and labor, art as a commodity and retail as a space of exchange.

“This exhibition differs from others in that it intentionally seeks to show work that is either made collaboratively, or that otherwise addresses ideas of support, community, conversation and exchange,” Kristensen said.

“Greater Together responds to some of the uncertainty and unease of our times. In periods of socio-political change, it is very natural for an artist or cultural producer to question what they do, and the relevance of what they do in relation to wider – sometimes more pressing – concerns. So I hope that in responding to this uncertainty, the exhibition has a currency or freshness that is relevant to our contemporary moment.”

Greater Together will run at ACCA until September 17. The exhibition is free. Visit acca.melbourne/exhibition/greater-together/ for further details.