MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
media kit
emily floyd
this place will always be open
INAUGURAL ANNUAL SCULPTURE COMMISSION
EXHIBITION DATES
4 October – May 2013
Opening function Saturday 6 October 3–5pm
MEDIA
For all media enquiries please contact Rosemary Forde rosemary.forde@monash.edu
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm
Emily Floyd, This place will always be open
2012, work in progress
courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz
Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney
Photo: John Brash
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
EMILY FLOYD: THIS PLACE WILL ALWAYS BE OPEN
INTRODUCTION
The inaugural annual commission for the Ian Potter Sculpture Court will see a major new public sculpture by Emily
Floyd explore the role and legacy of the university campus –
and museum – as a site of political potential. Drawing its title
and conceptual framework from the experimental student
struggles at Monash University during the 1960s and ’70s,
and incorporating a series of activities, events, debates,
workshops and publications, Floyd’s work serves as a space
for social encounter – reinvoking a utopian spirit that is open,
inclusive, free, provisional and generative.
THE SCULPTURE
Winding an unorthodox itinerary through the sculpture court
at MUMA, This place will always be open 2012 is a textbased sculptural work fabricated from painted and powdercoated steel. With a font designed by the artist, it derives its
logic from modernist typography, albeit in a highly abstracted
form. Almost – but not quite – pushed to the point of illegibility (attesting to our distance from, and yet ongoing influence
of the textual reference), Floyd’s high-key polychrome letters
present a declarative, emblematic slogan, whilst being open
from behind to reveal the constructivist manufacture and
aesthetics of the work.
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
The letters themselves serve as a marker of place, and variously operate as a form of civic discourse, public furniture,
or library stack, creating a place where students and visitors
can sit, read and enjoy the landscaped area of the sculpture
court, while also reflecting upon a specific history and potential invoked in what is an apparently simple sentence.
ANNUAL SCULPTURE COMMISSION:
IAN POTTER SCULPTURE COURT AT MUMA
Emily Floyd’s work is the first in an annual series of commissioned sculptural and/or architectural works, developed
to establish new opportunities for artists, and new models
of practice, thinking and research into public sculpture and
architectural practice.
The Ian Potter Sculpture Court adjoins MUMA and was
designed by landscape architects Simon Ellis and Fiona
Harrison in collaboration with Kerstin Thompson Architects.
Established in 2010 with MUMA’s relocation to Caulfield, it
was supported by a philanthropic grant from the Ian Potter
Foundation.
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm
Students In Dissent (SID), Melbourne
Is Your School Revolting? Join the
Underground 1969
Courtesy of www.reasoninrevolt.net.au
Archive of Ken Mansell
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
EMILY FLOYD: THIS PLACE WILL ALWAYS BE OPEN
ART, TEXT, POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND ACTIVISM
Inspired by the actions, political philosophy and utopian
spirit of the era of student uprising and struggle at Monash
University and internationally in the 1960s and ’70s, the text
which structures Floyd’s work is drawn from the first issue
of PRINT, published in Melbourne on Wednesday 4 March
1969, one of many pamphlets, bill-posters and slogans
produced at the time, from which the following excerpt is
drawn:
BE WHERE THE ACTION IS
Apart from the usual run of demonstrations, sit-ins,
riots and insurrections, club activities have included
weekly parties, speakers, films, seminars, debates,
weekend conferences and interstate factional struggles. We have also supported activities of the New Left
Group and Anti-Conscription Society (joint membership encouraged). Weekly general meetings are held to
decide Club policy and tactics (no other Monash group
operates in this way – that’s why they call us authoritarian). These are held every lunchtime in H4 – visitors
welcome (usually!), starting immediately. Together with
an organization called the ‘Revolutionary Socialists’ we
have just established a large off campus headquarters
at “The Bakery”, 120 Greville St Prahran (ph 51 3667).
This place (as soon as it’s fixed up) will always be
open for people to drop round and do some revolutionary work and will be a centre for many club activities – particularly those concerned with developing joint
student-worker action which will be one of our major
concerns in 1969.
— PRINT, no. 1, authorised by Mike Hyde, President
Monash Labor Club, 4 March 1969.
In drawing upon this history, Floyd’s work pays homage to
legendary and controversial figures including Albert Langer,
Ian Morgan, Dave Nadel, Jill Jolliffe, and Ken Mansell, many
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
of whom were involved with the group that began working
from The Bakery at 120 Greville Street, Prahran, and the
neighbouring Greville Street bookshop called Alice’s Restaurant, where titles such as Obsolete Communism – The Left
Wing Alternative could be picked up for under a dollar.
As Emily Floyd notes:
Like many Left-Wing inventions from this period of lateflowering Modernity, The Bakery is a model of communication and organization that prefigures and predicts
The Internet, as such it provides a way of thinking about
free-software, knowledge sharing, generative learning
and intellectual property in a contemporary context. The
idea of The Bakery also speaks to the role that contemporary art museums might play as facilitators of debate
and experimentation. The phrase This place will always
be open will not be lost on those who have followed the
new building works and program at MUMA.
EVENTS: REFLECTION, LEGACY AND PROJECTION
Revisiting a specific history of student activism in Melbourne,
Floyd’s work will serve not only as a marker of place, and a
time in history, but also as a platform to explore the legacy
and contemporary relevance of experimental student activism and lifestyle, through a series of artist instigated activities,
workshops, print and publication projects, involving leading
protagonists of student demonstrations and political action in
the 1960s, and current students, artists, activists and cultural
workers.
Activating historical material in the present, Floyd’s work will
not only explore the achievements, failures, legacies and potential of past models, but also the relation to contemporary
events such as the Occupy movement, the Arab Spring, and
current and recent wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm
Emily Floyd, An Open Space 2011
Courtesy of the artist and
Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
and Sydney
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
EMILY FLOYD: THIS PLACE WILL ALWAYS BE OPEN
EMILY FLOYD: ABRIDGED BIOGRAPHY
Education and knowledge are key themes in the work of
Melbourne-based artist Emily Floyd (born 1972). In a practice
that encompasses public art, installation, community
projects and printmaking, interaction is a fundamental part of
the process of engagement for the artist. She has a longstanding interest in educational philosophies and her artwork
explores how information is communicated and the ideas
that shape who we are and who we wish to be.
Floyd frequently works with language and texts in
unexpected ways – meticulously considering elements such
as font and colour, shape and size, material and movement
to create tactile works that not only engage our senses, and
the space around us, but also serve to initiate discussions
about contemporary social, cultural and political ideas.
Emily Floyd has participated in over 50 exhibitions in major
galleries and museums in Australia and internationally.
Recent individual exhibitions include: Here small gestures
make complex structures, Museum of Contemporary Art,
Sydney, 2012; All Day Workshop / Catalyst, Australian
Print Workshop, Melbourne, 2012; An Open Space, Anna
Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, 2011; and The Cultural
Studies Reader, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo 2010. Recent
group exhibitions include Kindness: Undarta, Habitat Centre,
New Delhi, 2012; Colour Bazaar, Heide Museum of Modern
Art, Melbourne, 2011; 10 Ways to look at the Past, NGV
Ground Floor, Building F
Monash University, Caulfield Campus
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East VIC 3145 Australia
Melbourne, 2011; In the Balance: Art for a Changing World,
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2010; and Home
and Away, Australian Embassy Washington DC, 2011.
Floyd’s works are held in numerous collections including, The
Victoria and Alert Museum, London; The National Gallery of
Australia, Canberra; Gallery of Modern Art Queensland, The
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; The National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, and Monash University Collection.
Floyd has completed several large-scale public art works,
including Public Art Strategy, 2008 for Melbourne’s Eastlink
motorway.
PROJECT CREDITS
Artist: Emily Floyd
Curator: Max Delany
Over the course of the exhibition, Emily Floyd and MUMA will
facilitate the reproduction, discussion and representation of
material relating to student activism in the 1960s and ’70s
from the archive of Ken Mansell.
Emily Floyd would like to thank Ken Mansell and Darce
Cassidy for their generous support of this project.
Courtesy: Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Telephone +61 3 9905 4217
muma@monash.edu
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm; Sat 12 – 5pm
Emily Floyd, This place will always be
open 2012, work in progress
courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz
Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney
Photo: John Brash