Oblivion Festival | A brief memory account by artist and curator Jay YOUNGER
the ephemera interviews
In this series of living memory accounts by and interviews with artists directly involved in ARIs and grassroots artist-run culture 1970 to Now they speak about the social, cultural and political context for their art making. Artists around the globe often feel that their artists’ ephemera is explicitly made and situated as transient, but collectable, art works. They provide key insights into the artists’ ephemera, artist-run activities and intersectional DIY independent contemporary art events they produced or collaborated on during this period. Artists’ ephemera includes artworks, photocopy/xerox art, zines, artist books, banners, fridge magnets, stickers, t-shirts, street sandwich boards, photographs, videos, films, audio, mail art, posters, exhibition invites, flyers, buttons and badges, exhibition catalogues, exhibition didactics, room sheets, guest books, related artist publications, analogue to digital resources and artist files, many of these ephemeral materials are currently ‘at risk’ and are held by artists as the primary custodians in their largely publicly “inaccessible” personal archives. The ARI Remix project aims to, 1) reconnect with artists to access, digitize, contextualize and re-present these ‘at risk’ ephemeral materials and 2), to welcome and enable artists to participate in ‘action heritage’ and ‘cultural justice’ through an archival art initiative cultural form. This process affords the retrieval, recovery and social distribution of their materials through cultural storytelling; prose, memory, poetry, visual essays and so on….thanks for reading and sharing ?
BIO
Jay Younger is a critically engaged Brisbane based artist, curator and academic and is Adjunct Professor at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Jay’s often satirical and absurdist artwork takes form as photo media, public art and multimedia installation with the purpose of interrogating the position and status of women and to ask questions about the human subject immersed in the conflicting agendas of politicised space. During the repressive Bjelke-Petersen era, Jay collaborated with a group of young artists to build artistic infrastructure in Brisbane (including Queensland Artworks Alliance, Eyeline Magazine, and That Space) to block the drain of Queensland talent southward. Throughout her career, Jay has maintained a strong commitment to the values of artist run initiatives. As an educator she has been passionately dedicated to the development of many emerging artists’ careers. Her artwork has been exhibited extensively both in Australia and overseas and is represented in major public gallery collections throughout Australia. In 1988 along with Paul Andrew and Lehan Ramsay, Jay formed AXIS ART PROJECTS and undertook “Does New York Exist?” a life-changing three-month Australia Council funded residency in NYC. Additionally, Jay has been awarded Australia Council solo studio residencies in Italy and the Philippines. She was a recipient of the $30,000 Arts Queensland Creative Fellowship and has also received new work grants from Arts Queensland. Most recently Jay exhibited in; Hands Across the Pacific; in 2019 and was one of eight artists representing Australia at The Ningbo Museum of Art, China. She was awarded an Arts Queensland grant to create Meat Mirror, a performance activated multimedia temporary public art work, in collaboration with Lisa O’Neill. Meat Mirror—focused on the role of social media in the normalisation of cosmetic surgery—was exhibited/performed at Mappin’s Nursery and THE WALLS in 2021.
Artist Website
