WTS membership fundraising exhibition
24 November - 9 December

OPENING
Friday 24 November
(Lofty awards 2024)

"Hurray! We get to stay!

WTS will continue making and creating for at least another 3 years in our beloved old-petrol-station on 8 Gap Road.
It’s been a tough call, finding and securing a home in the nightmarish climate of the current housing market, filled with bugs, beasts and other late-capitalist pests.
To support us securing this investment, and celebrate with a show that get’s us all buzzing and humming, we will host a fundraising exhibition celebrating the true building bricks of this desert ARI: WTS members!

All mediums, expressions and art forms are welcome.

Artworks need to be submitted by 10 November
Drop in during WTS opening hours: Wed- Fri 12-5

Make sure the title, your name and your preferred fundraising option is clearly mentioned or communicated with WTS staff when submitting your work.

Fundraising options:
~ 50/50 to artists and WTS
~ Name your price, and WTS will take any funds raised over and above
~ All funds to WTS

All local NT and interstate members and artists are welcome, artists need to arrange their own shipping of artworks to WTS.

Not a member yet, but would love to exhibit? Not a problem, via this link you can become a member for only $35 a year!

For more information, get in touch via: wts@wts.org.au"

Applications close midnight, Tuesday 31 October.

https://westspace.org.au/apply

"Two successful artists or collectives will receive support to develop a project for presentation in our main gallery at Collingwood Yards.

What we offer:

2025 West Space Commissions provide an artist fee of $3,000 plus assistance to seek additional funding.

We offer 12-18 months development of your project, and a supportive platform for experimentation. We seek to connect you and your work with local, regional, national and international peers, and industry professionals. We communicate your work to audiences through writing, discursive and performative programs.

What we are looking for:

Expressions of interest that are politically and culturally engaged, conceptually rigorous, and introduce new ideas or ways of thinking to our community.

Seeking to redress historical imbalances, we prioritise applications from First Nations artists, Culturally Diverse artists, and artists from d/Deaf and/or Disabled communities.

Selection criteria:

Clear and compelling conceptual rationale;
Consideration of West Space’s values;
Suitability for gallery size and scale;
Ambition and readiness to partake in the opportunity;
Ability to realise the project, as demonstrated by an appropriate level of experience and support material.
About West Space:

Now in our thirtieth year, West Space is the leading independent visual arts organisation in Naarm/Melbourne's inner-north.

Housed in multi-arts precinct Collingwood Yards, West Space is responsive to the evolving needs of artists. West Space provides professional pathways for early career artists to develop their practices and build networks. We support mid-career artists to experiment and take risks outside the demands of larger public or commercial institutions."

Oct 25 - Nov 10

"Leslie Holding was born in former Yugoslavia in 1952. He is 71 years old at this point in time.

An abstract surrealist artist fascinated by dreamscapes and imagery of rural and metropolitan areas.

A pivotal moment in his life occurred when he was first admitted to a psychiatric ward. It was ten days before his 17th birthday.

He was homeless and picked up by services at half past five in the morning. Much of his perception of houses and landscapes reflects this time and his sense of an empty uncaring society. He describes the years following this as “running through the system without shoes”.

Leslie is passionate about the way art can be used to explore states of ‘madness’ as well as parallels with codes of communication like mathematics and architecture. Hyper-physics is an area of regular consideration.

Lots of art forms in madness is Leslie’s first solo exhibition and includes works from the past 12 years of his practice.

The exhibition will continue across all three Seventh gallery spaces until Friday 10th November."

Call out closes November 14th.

"We are looking for someone to use our gallery, office and a studio space over summer for their creative practice. We will offer in-kind rent for the space in exchange for care-taking of the building.

The summer resident caretaker will have various responsibilities that will be discussed including:

ADMIN
Utilities (internet, electricity)
Liase with relevant people for who to call in relevant situations (board members, landlord, security, contractors if relevant)
Checking PO box

MAINTENANCE
Cleaning
Flood proofing
Securing building if necessary (damage)

If anything below is daunting or not entirely relevant, or if you would prefer to email us directly to discuss an submission please don’t hesitate to get in touch at wts@wts.org.au"

28 Oct → 19 Nov 2023

**Performance lecture at the opening event, 28 Oct, 3 – 5 pm**Italic text

"West Space is proud to present bahay kubo by Tarntanya/Adelaide based artist Rayleen Forester in the West Space Window.

bahay kubo is a performance lecture and text-based installation examining filipinx diaspora language, cultural heritage and migrant labour. Based on a children's folk song about bamboo stilt houses indigenous to the Philippines bahay kubo touches on cultural embodiment, hereditary responsibility and our nuanced relationship with colonised lands.

As part of a series of personally led, public interventions bahay kubo is the second iteration of gatherings for filipinx diaspora community and allies to connect and participate through performance and writing."

Performance lecture written by Rayleen Forester and performed by Rayleen with Beatrice Rubio-Gabriel. Design by Nina Gibbes. Furniture by Peter Fong.

This project is supported by Arts South Australia. West Space Window is supported by City of Yarra and viewable during all Collingwood Yards open hours.

28 Oct → 16 Dec 2023

Opening event, 28 Oct, 3 – 5 pm
Batik workshop, 29 Oct, 11 am – 3 pm

"West Space presents a new body of work by Mparntwe/Alice Springs based artist Chris Ng.

"Where you from?" is a question often asked in Mparntwe. It is a colloquial phrase but given the context – spoken on land where local Indigenous cultures and languages are still commonly practiced – it can also hold deep ancestral meaning.

The population of Mparntwe is a melting pot of people, from Central, Eastern and Western Arrernte, Pitintjara, Walpiri and Luritja peoples, to non-Indigenous people "born and bred in Alice”, to national and international migrants who have relocated for work opportunities and to escape city life.

Where you from? is born from the artist's experience of living in such a place, as a person of colour and first-generation 'Australian'. It is a project for the culturally ambiguous by the culturally ambiguous, for whom the term “culturally diverse” is complex.

Realised across ceramics and installation, Where you from? looks to reimagine cultural identities and histories, to redefine an understanding of multiculturalism in so-called 'Australia' by presenting it in intimate and individual scale. Where you from? is about voicing the unique insights that people of layered cultural backgrounds have to share, and focussing on the diverse cultures that we know rather than what we have lost."

"Big news!

We are overjoyed to finally announce our new gallery, located upstairs (or up the lift!) at 40 Leeds Street, in the heart of Footscray!

We can’t wait to welcome back our Troc fam, friends and community. We’re working hard to turn this beautiful space into our home, so stay tuned for an update on when we’ll be opening our doors.

A big thank you to everyone who has supported us and worked with us while we’ve been off-site and online for the last two years. We couldn’t have gotten here without you!

Trocadero is supported by the City of Maribyrnong"

http://www.trocaderoartspace.com.au/

19 October 2023–11 November 2023

An artist travels to a small island to be better immersed in the colonised minority language, and is met by a dead crane and an Irish-speaking, shape-shifting horse.

The horse engages the artist in a teasing conversation on family legacy, the fallacy of books, neolithic inscriptions, burial, ancestral anxieties, colonial violence and contemporary housing crisis politics. In this work, a home takes many forms, including the scaffolding for learning and preserving language.

This installation draws on my work on voicing’s self-determining potential, and how learning Irish became a practice to further understand (but then in reality further confuse) the responsibilities of white settler identities and the inheritance of colonial silencing.