ephemeral traces: Brisbane’s artist-run scene in the 1980s | 2 April- 26 June 2016 | Catalogue Essay
ephemeral traces provides the first introductory analysis of artist-run practice in Brisbane during the final decade of the conservative Joh Bjelke-Petersen government. The exhibition focuses on the scene that developed around five key spaces that operated in Brisbane from 1982 to 1988: One Flat, A Room, That Space, The Observatory, and John Mills National.
Drawing on artworks, documentation, and ephemera, the exhibition—in a suite of four complementary UQAM exhibitions—provides an introductory contextual account of this progressive artist-run activity, examining collective projects, publications, and the spaces themselves, as well as organizations such as the Artworkers Union and Queensland Artworkers Alliance. A counterpoint to Michele Helmrich’s earlier exhibition Return to Sender (UQ Art Museum, 2012), which focused on the artists who left Queensland during the Bjelke-Petersen era, this exhibition is about the artists who stayed. This exhibition can be read alongside earlier influential Brisbane artist cooperatives curated by Michele Helmrich in her 2016 group exhibition Barjai and Miya Studio, staged simultaneously with ephemeral traces.
Organizer: UQAM, St Lucia, Brisbane
Independent Artist Curator: Peter Anderson
Inspired by prodigious DIY artist self-publishing activity expressed inside Brisbane artist-run communities in the 1980s, 1990s, and since, the ephemeral traces exhibition catalogue adopted the form of a stapled photocopy DIY zine.