Six new exhibitions open at Linden ­ St Kilda Centre for Contemporary Arts on Thursday 20 September at 6pm.

Colloquium In Gallery One brings together four Melbourne artists who use script or writing in their visual arts practice. Brandt McCook, Louise Haselton, Rose Nolan and Tim Craker investigate the material and immaterial nature of language.

2001 Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award finalist, Susan Milne, presents Reading a Wave in Gallery Two. Using a series of warped rectangular panels Milne reconstructs the human environment as a landscape of shifting surfaces and forms that intersect with the real space of the site.

Brigita Ozolins' I have my work cut out for me in Gallery Three is a writing performance and sound installation that aims to explore the relationship between language, knowledge and subjective experience. Ozolins' performance can be observed daily from 1 ­ 4pm.

Chair by Christopher Mether in Gallery Four is an investigation into memory and identity involving a series of material transformations. A chair has been constructed of wooden planks, burnt, then its ashes reconstructed into their original form.

In Gallery Five Jessie Angwin's Skein explores the contemporary relationship between skin and clothing. Angwin addresses positive and negative notions of human and idealised skins in the language of the commercial. Skin becomes a commodity available in multiple colours, tones, sizes and styles.

Janet Korakas' body of ceramic work in her Path of Heart (Cabinets) focuses on the vessel. Surfaces inspired by the Rococco style and embracing aquatic and botanical themes are richly embellished with a profusion of shells, corals, rocks and foliage.

All exhibitions continue until Sunday 14 October
Gallery hours are: Tuesday ­ Sunday 1.00pm ­ 6.00pm

See details of associated events below.

For further information and/or images please contact Amy Barrett-Lennard on 9209 6794 or email info@lindenarts.org

with Annette Larkin, Head of Contemporary Art, Christies Australia
6.30pm Tuesday 25 September

Linden - St Kilda Centre for Contemporary Arts
26 Acland Street, St Kilda
Cost: $25 (includes light refreshments)
bookings essential, ph 9209 6794 or email admin@lindenarts.org

Sydney based Annette Larkin, dynamic Head of the new Christie's Australia Contemporary Art Department, will talk about the pleasures and pitfalls of developing your own contemporary art collection. Larkin will present some examples of contemporary Australian art and explain what to look for and think about when making art purchases. She will also talk about the development of her new department and the role it plays in promoting contemporary Australian art internationally.

An arts graduate from the University of Sydney, Larkin has benefited from both commercial and institutional experience. After eight years with Macquarie Galleries in Sydney she worked at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, was selected as the Australian Curator and Commissioner of the VIII Triennale-India and was later appointed Curator of the Newcastle Regional Gallery.

Refreshments will be served after the talk when you can enjoy an informal chat with Annette and fellow artists or art collectors.

Developing a Contemporary Art Collection is part of the Articulate program, a series of events presented by Gasworks Arts Park, Linden and Theatreworks. The ARTICULATE progam is assisted by the Australia Council, the Commonwealth Government's funding and advisory body, through its Audience and Marketing Development Division.

Art and Text in the 20th Century

Brigita Ozolins presents an illustrated overview of some of the diverse ways text has been used in art during the last century. The talk will start with Dada, Duchamp and the Surrealist attempts to tap into the unconscious through automatic writing then move into the 1960's and the antics of the short-lived Fluxus movement as well as the more serious strategies of Conceptual Art. The use of text to explore feminist issues by artists such as Mary Kelly, Barbara Kruger and Helen Aylon will also be examined. The forum will conclude with more recent examples of text-based work, ranging from Roni Hornšs sculptural sentences to the obsessive calligraphic inscriptions of Tsang, Tsou Choi, the King of Kowloon, whose canvas is literally the public buildings and spaces of Hong Kong.

Brigita Ozolins is currently exhibiting an installation and performance piece titled I have my work cut out for me in Gallery Three. She is a PhD candidate at the Hobart School of Art, University of Tasmania, researching the relationship between language, knowledge and subjectivity.

Brandt McCook, exhibiting artist and curator of Colloquium (Gallery One), will talk about his exhibition which also features the work of Louise Haselton, Rose Nolan and Tim Craker, all of whom use script or writing in their practice. Whilst promising a specific reading, the use of script in this exhibition, also alerts us to the strategies on which this is based. Drawing on the claim of script to express individual experience the artists have challenged this by situating it within a public space over which the individual has no control.

6pm Thursday 4 October
Linden - St Kilda Centre for Contemporary Arts
26 Acland Street, St Kilda 
Cost: $5 (includes a glass of wine)
bookings essential, ph 9209 6794 or email admin@lindenarts.org

Experience & Perception

Susan Milne talks about her work in Reading a Wave (Gallery Two). Using a series of warped rectangular panels Milne constructs artificial landscapes that combine the material presence of three dimensional objects with the illusionary qualities of two dimensional surfaces. Reading a Wave reconstructs the human environment, presenting it as a landscape of shifting surfaces and forms that intersect with the real space of the room. Traversing the space like a ruptured platform it provides the viewer with a constantly changing field of vision.

Memory & Identity

Christopher Mether talks about his installation titled Chair in Gallery Four. Chair involves a series of material transformations. Wooden planks are taken to construct a chair, the chair is then burnt. An object is perceived in terms of its past; a chair that has been damaged by fire is described as a burnt chair, rather than being described as a charcoal chair. The word Œburntš denotes the past tense, it describes what the chair has been through, not what it is presently. With an awareness of how this object is perceived, Mether seeks to make this perception manifest in a physical form. By creating moulds of the original chair, then placing charcoal remains within these moulds and casting them in clear resin, he is able to encapsulate the charcoal chair in its past form.

6pm Tuesday 9 October
Linden - St Kilda Centre for Contemporary Arts
26 Acland Street, St Kilda
Cost: $5 (includes a glass of wine)
bookings essential, ph 9209 6794 or email admin@lindenarts.org

with Larissa Hjorth

The ultimate commodity in the landscape of contemporary culture is the celebrity. Unlike the star, whose aura signified the mystery of the private, the celebrity represents a blurring of public and private vernaculars. Together with the emergence of a plethora of reality TV programs, the celebrity highlights shifts between the fabrics of media, reality and identity, reconfiguring notions of private and public.

How then is this reflected within contemporary art practice? Do Naomi Kleinšs concepts in 'No Logo' provide an adequate fabric for re-thinking representation and consumerism within global economies? Is Arjun Appanduraišs model for renegotiating east/west cultural global flows in terms of disjuncture and difference a realistic proposition? And how is the notion of ambivalence being performed within contemporary art's constructions of gender?

These questions, and more, will be raised by Larissa Hjorth in a discussion of Jessie Angwin's exhibition Skein (Gallery 5).

Larissa Hjorth lectures in Art & Design History and Theory at the Victorian College of the Arts and the National School of Design, Swinburne University of Technology . She has published articles and reviews in 'Art and Australia' and 'Art Asia Pacific' and has contributed a chapter to the forthcoming 'Mobile Cultures' from Duke University Press.

Prominent ceramicist, lecturer and writer, Christopher Sanders, will talk about Janet Korakas' work in Path of Heart (cabinets). He will outline Korakas' background and his own role as her tutor at RMIT as well as examine her work within the context of contemporary Australian ceramic training and practice and in light of recent international trends.

3pm Sunday 14 October
Linden - St Kilda Centre for Contemporary Arts
26 Acland Street, St Kilda
Cost : $5 (includes afternoon tea)
bookings essential, ph 9209 6794 or email admin@lindenarts.org