Greater Together

Greater Together begins with the question of work and of how to work better. It takes place in a period of uncertainty, when contemporary societal divisions (political, environmental, cultural and geographic) are creating real need to share knowledge and resources, and to reassess ideas of production and organisation—professionally, socially and artistically. At the same time, conventional methods of working are changing, with advances in thinking and technology creating new ways for people to communicate and organise—offering unprecedented opportunities to share services and skills, and to create networks and relationships across distance, difference and time.

Greater Together assembles eight artist projects that complicate individual notions of authorship and instead consider ideas of collaboration and cooperation as deliberate and productive means of agency and solidarity in a complex and changing world. While acknowledging the inherent challenges of working together, and the often-utopian ideals of collectivity, the exhibition explores various models of artistic collaboration (from conscious, pragmatic decisions to divide skills and labour; to the natural result of long-term friendships, romantic partnerships or family ties) to consider broader ideas of community, communication and cooperation—both in the discipline of art and in the wider, global, networked world.

A ninth project WORK/SHOP, engages four artist practitioners and collaborators who have developed conceptual retail projects for the ACCA bookshop as a physical and metaphorical extension of the exhibition.

Artists: Bik Van der Pol, Antoinette J. Citizen and Courtney Coombs, Clark Beaumont, Céline Condorelli, Field Theory, Goldin+Senneby, C.T. Jasper and Joanna Malinowska, and Patrick Staff

Work/shop: Debris Facility, Get to Work, OK YEAH COOL GREAT and Paradise Structures

A curated program of talks, performances and events has been developed alongside the exhibition, including:

Future Forums, hosted by leading Australian thinkers including philosopher Peter Singer, architecture academic Jacqui Alexander, ACMI Director Katrina Sedgwick and Erik Jensen, Editor of The Saturday Paper, who will discuss the notion of collaboration, as it applies to the future of the environment, architecture, work and communications.

Clark Beaumont’s The O zone, a performance that draws attention to our relationship with one another and the environment, and how our individual desires and actions have potential collective and lasting affects.

Fortnightly Saturday “survival sessions” led by artist collective Field Theory, with a number of niche members clubs from across Melbourne, that examine the specific skillsets needed to survive the event of an apocalypse. 

Curated by Annika Kristensen.