ARI REMIX PROJECT – 2026-2032 – ACF FUNDRAISER + INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE
ART FROM THE ROOFTOPS…
Artist-run spaces (ARIs) are places where artists’ agency is everything.
Nowhere Art Group – Closing Event. Nowhere Art Group-Viewfinder Closing Event Multideck Takeover, 3 May 2009. Nowhere Art Group acknowledges the Sunshine Coast Country, home of the Kabi Kabi peoples and the Jinibara peoples, the Traditional Custodians, whose lands, skies and waters we all now share.
Hello dear friends, colleagues and ARI lovers,
Adventure into a very different Australian landscape; the main streets, malls, back streets, alleys, laneways, islands, rooftops and reactivated spaces to discover the daring artists, artist groupings, visionaries, punks, rebels and rock stars who have pushed against convention in life, art and sociality.
From eX de Medici, Luke Roberts, John Nixon, Eugene Carchesio and Robert MacPherson to the Pink Elephant Café, AXIS Art Projects, Nowhere Art Group and M.O.C.A, these vibrant images and ‘ARI stories so far’ of people and places from our ongoing ARI Remix ‘living archives’ project pay homage to and digitally archive Australia’s enduring counterculture.
Current Brief Project Description
ARI Remix is a community-based and participatory heritage internet artwork as ‘living archives’ progressing and mapping ‘at risk’ Queensland/ Australian Artist Run Culture and Heritage 1940 to Now. In 2026 we launch our new Australian Cultural Foundation crowdfunding campaign towards all Project Three ‘memory work‘ activity 2026-2032.
Please help us grow, nuance and preserve Australian ARI cultural heritage into perpetuity. Here, ARI Remix 2026-2032 actively supports new participatory contributions with 30 artists directly involved in alternative artist-run places, spaces and sites, physical, digital and re-imagined 1940 to Now.
We have recently completed Projects One and Two [ i.e. March 2011 – February 2026 ] through immense kindness, generosity and extensive volunteerism from over 600 artists and 300 Queensland/Australian ARIs and you can access the core 21st Century internet artwork as ‘living archives; link
here: https://ariremix.com.au/
As a longitudinal, collaborative and interactive eresource mapping the largely unmapped diversity of the 1940 to NOW Queensland/ Australian Artist-Run Initiative Scene in this new rolling Project Three activation we ‘go national’.
We invite artists/ARI nationwide to write, reflect and illustrate in their own words and ‘get digitally archived!’
We have contributed to major exhibitions including Ephemeral Traces: Brisbane’s Artist-Run Scene in the 1980s staged at the University of Queensland Art Museum {UQAM) in 2016, Adjusting Margins at Outer Space in 2022, Beautiful Wickedness at QAGOMA in 2023, as well as Make A Scene: Fashioning queer identity and club culture in the 90s at the Queensland Museum and the HOTA COLLECTS; Ruby Spowart exhibitions across 2025-26, our ARI-based memory work is essential, colourful and deeply engaging.
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Additionally, by way of a current and brief testimonial about the value of ARI Remix in the changing and evolving cultural data landscape. The UNSW leading Australian Creative Histories and Futures (ACHF) has identified the invaluable contribution we are making to ‘digital futures’ change processes underway now.
The ACHF is a four‑year research infrastructure initiative being developed by researchers in the UNSW School of the Arts & Media, in collaboration with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and university and industry partners across the country. This timely project aims to enable greater interoperability between fragmented cultural databases and to better support research and understanding of the Australian cultural data landscape.
They have prepared a ‘landscape report’ and are in the process of publishing a public version. Significantly, the ARI Remix Project is referenced in the report as a valuable community-led archive, and as an illustration of a multiform ‘living archives’ in the Australian cultural data ecosystem. The report will be made freely available online for non‑commercial educational and sector‑development purposes. Finding permanent homes and collections for digital art forms and community archives like ARI Remix is one of the challenges of the 21st Century.
As mentioned above, this month we launched our new Australian Cultural Foundation crowdfunding, preservation and heritage growth campaign towards all Project Three creative developments. Please donate if you can.
This new activity builds on extensive recuperative and remix experience so far. It encompasses identifying, accessing and including 30 new artist participants, 30 ARIs [1970 to Now] and independent artist community members and allies. ARI Remix is a living archives as archival art initiative; LGBTQIA+, cis, non-binary, Queer-Trans, Crip Time, ARI Time and BIPOC inclusive, and involves active participation and collaborative collecting engagement by artists, arts workers, co-creatives, peers and artist groups.
Please share this support, ARI advocacy and donation link and the brief participation call-out here with friends, colleagues and social networks, no donation is too small. Thanks for your kindness and care and support over the past 16 years we are truly grateful.
ACCESS:
ARI Remix Project Three – Nation-Wide ‘ARIs Revisited’ Call-Out
Invitation to Participate – Add your ARI Story 1970 to Now to the Public Record. Public Histories Matter!
Overview: A Blog Post and complementary Zine [PDF] to add into to the ‘extra’ zine anthology here – https://ariremix.com.au/extrazine/
If you, friends, colleagues or peers would like to value-add here with your own reflective Australian ‘ARI story so far’ please get in touch with your web-ready version. We hope this fundraiser will generate artist fees and digital infrastructure support for each of the 30 new artist participants and these ‘historic’ contributions.
What we need: In a nutshell:
- A little ‘everything you ever wanted to know about our ARI’ vignette, interview (written or in an audio/video recorded in MP3/MP4 format), a short story or artist report/reflection up to 1600-2000 words, up to 12 or 24 images – past, present or emerging,
- Add your image captions with thick descriptions (JPG or TIF files with up to 50 words per description), your relevant ARI(s) information, list(s) of artists, biogeographical profile/ loci and term(s) of operability and re-iterations (ARI Time or ARI temporalities), complementary contextual information, PDF resources and weblinks,
- Add in your one-pager resume, BIO and a photo of you, your ARI in action, artworks/documentation and ARI aficionados. Add in all credits, acknowledgements and quotes. Here is one recent example fyi and to whet your appetite:
https://ariremix.com.au/extra-zine-issue-7-re-presenting-2022-nowhere-art-group/
If you can, simply assemble all these wonderful memory-packed resources into one combined PDF (no more than 122 MB) – what we call an ARI DIY memory zine – as a type of community archives – and email us with your info and PDF webzine to: artsmedia [at] gmail.com.
If possible, maybe do this – and have loads of artful fun and re-memory while doing so – by the end of August, October, November or December 2026, or at a pinch, January – February 2027. And I am more than happy to help if you need a wee bit of DIY facilitation with the actual assemblage process. Any questions kindly add them into your email with your ARI Remix web-ready resources attached. Thank you!
Happy Spring 2026!
Warm wishes,
Paul
Paul Andrew | he/they
Whistling Kite Artist’s Studio
‘ Artists Make Queersland ‘
Australian Artist, Community Facilitator, Zinester & Curator
Pronouns: He, They
Kindly Support Us Here – via the multimodal digital artform framework we employ for the ARI Remix Projects One, Two and Three activations 2011-2032:
ARI REMIX PROJECT – 2026-2032 – Project Three
NB: I am currently on long service leave in 2026
Current Archival Art Projects [Expanded Internet Art]
Pink Elephant Revisited Presented by ARI Remix
ARI Remix + Extra Zine – A Polyvocal Memory of Queensland/Australian Artist Run Culture & Heritage 1940 to NOW. Internet Artwork as a parody of ‘the Archive’.
Internet Artwork Accessed: https://ariremix.com.au/
Please join us on the socials here:
Australian ARI Living Archives | Artist-Run Culture & Heritage 1940 to NOW
https://www.instagram.com/extra_zine
https://www.instagram.com/ari_remix
https://www.instagram.com/vignettestream
https://www.instagram.com/paulandrewart
RECENT EXHIBITION DOCUMENTATION:
Headlands Revisited Presented by ARI Remix
QUT Doctoral Research: Dr Paul Andrew (2025) Artists as A(na)rchivists: Unpacking Brisbane Artist-Run Initiatives and the Archive.
I acknowledge the Quandamooka People, Traditional Custodians of the lands, waters, and seas where I live and work with arts and culture experiences today. I pay my respects to Elders, past, present, and future.
On a more personal note;
As a queer artist working independently in the Queensland/Australian arts ecosystem since 1977 I am delighted that human rights and human dignity are; at long long last, going next level and increasingly better nuanced and more just in 2026. There is still much more political work to be done!
I am truly grateful to the ACF for kindly supporting and advocating our ongoing memory work here.
ALSO:
We are looking for a well-resourced digitally motivated collaborative partner and sponsor for our new ‘ARIs Revisited’ oral history podcast series. Please get in touch if this is something you would like to fund, facilitate, support and grow as a digital futures resource in 2026-27.
Like many queer artists living and working in Queensland/Australia I am ever-motivated by the pre-history of artistic bohemianism and queer modernism which explicitly emerged and evolved in Brisbane Magandjin in the Forties.
Artistic bohemianism and queerness – and the lures of queerness- share a deeply affective historical bond because this ethos rejects normativity, conventional social rules and enables non-conforming ways of artfulness, living and sociality.
Queer time, ‘eccentric’ archives and artmaking like ARI Remix and my broader artistic practice – including ephemeral practices, social practices, remix, bricolage, assemblage, collage, sound art and documentary-like techniques – during the past five decades forms a critical part of the arts-based conceptual mindset I enliven. Thank you one and all for your care, acknowledgement, friendship, fab collabs and support over my lifetime so far.
ARIs Revisited
We are currently working on a three-part exhibition, installation and publication pilot titled: ARIs Revisited.
2025 – Headlands Revisited – Redland Art Gallery, Cleveland.
2026 – Pink Elephant Revisited, Loupe Studio, Yeerongpilly.
2027 – BIG FUN, at a venue to be announced in late 2027.
I deeply acknowledge and am forever indebted to ex-Brisbane curator colleague Clare Williamson for her groundbreaking curatorial work over the decades including the State Library of Victoria exhibition ‘Bohemian Melbourne’, one of the most engaging and inspiring exhibitions I have witnessed so far. Bohemian Melbourne expresses the city’s rich history of unconventional artists, writers, and free spirits who directly challenged social and cultural norms from the 1860s onward.
Accessed here:
https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/search-discover/galleries/bohemian-melbourne
Thank you dear Clare and SLV!
