Conflations between authenticity, mimicry, natural, man-made, historical and anachronistic are important to the work. To this end, Lim finds inspiration in sites and objects that are both ‘contemporary’ and ‘out of time’, embodied and virtual. Model homes, suburban sprawl, CCTV, online chat rooms, fake food, historical parks and the Australian landscape have all featured in the work. Counterpoint to these sites, Lim has performed the identities of Japanese hikikomori; a Bowie-eyed rock star; the cannibal Issei Sagawa; a suburban beautician; Miranda from Picnic at Hanging Rock and currently, a gold Mao-suited ‘Ambassador’. This dialogue between place and performance reflects the push-pull between Australian and Asian, the mono and the multicultural. Lim’s work has been exhibited, performed and screened locally and internationally at venues, festivals and fairs that include: Tate Modern, ACCA, GOMA, ACMI, HUN Gallery NY, Next Wave, FACT Liverpool, 24HR Art (Darwin), Substation (Singapore), Schoolhouse Studios, Experimenta, Sydney Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), Melbourne Festival, ACAF (Shanghai), TINA, Dark MOFO, Bus Projects, West Space and MPavilion. Collaboration, artistic community and the intersection between art and society informs her practice: in addition to her solo work, she co-directed the inaugural Channels Festival, was the founding editor of Assemble Papers and co-founded Tape Projects. Lim is the co-writer and host of Video Becomes Us, an artist-made ABC iView series on video art. She is a tutor at the Victorian College of the Arts and is the co-director (with Mish Grigor and Lara Thoms) of APHIDS, a 25-year-old experimental artistic company based in Melbourne.
EXIT STRATEGIES (WORLD PREMIERE)
Wed 13 – Sun 17 Nov
Arts House, North Melbourne
Exit Strategies is a theatre show about escape, change and disappearance. About the privilege of movement. About knowing when your time is up, and sensing when you’ve overstayed your welcome. It’s about wondering if you can go home again, or if you ever really had one. About what happens when the going gets tough (spoiler alert: the tough get going). In the first artistic collaboration for new APHIDS co-directors Mish Grigor, Lara Thoms and Eugenia Lim, Exit Strategies is a bracingly clever, bleakly funny and deeply angry new theatre work.
SELECTION FOR 36th KASSEL DOKFEST
12–17 November | Kassel, Germany
Eugenia Lim’s ON DEMAND (2019) has been selected for the Kurzfilm (shorts) program for this year’s Kassel Dokfest, Kassel, Germany. According to the panel “Film is formed only in its relationship to society. The short film section of Kassel Dokfest, too, reflects ever relevant themes, questions, joys, problems and discourses that characterize our current life together. The 24 programs, which the selection committee of six compiled from roughly 2000 submissions, demonstrate once again how the short film as a form can contribute to the varied, engaged, and formally ambitious examination of our present time.”
ON DEMAND (SOLO SHOW)
EUGENIA LIM: ON DEMAND
Gertrude Glasshouse, Collingwood
Opening: Thurs 10 Oct, 6-8pm
Exhibition Dates: 11 Oct – 9 Nov
This is a pedal-powered work. You are invited to sit on a bicycle to cycle and work up a sweat to activate the work.
Made in collaboration with workers from the gig economy, ON DEMAND is a pedal-powered video work that considers work, labour, solidarity and movement (political and physical) in the neoliberal present.
LOOP DISCOVER AWARD 2019
Eugenia is one of 10 artists selected for the LOOP Discover Award 2019. This year’s edition is themed ‘Making the City’ and asks: What role will citizens have in these transformation processes? How can we take advantage of new technologies? In short, what kind of cities do we want? An international jury comprising Irene Campolmi (curator, Copenhagen), Hiuwai Chu (MACBA, (Barcelona), Chema González (Museo Nacional Reina Sofía, Madrid), Javier Panera (writer, curator and Professor, Universidad de Salamanca (Salamanca) and Carlos Durán (Founding co-director of LOOP Barcelona).
loop-barcelona.com
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