Building a career in the arts can take multiple trajectories, often beyond the studio and gallery. To support their practice, artists invest labour in alternative practices and commercial ventures. Reflecting on the reality of multi-vocational practice, the conversation series Career Arcs will engage art professionals in a demystification of their fields, careers and individual experiences, as their practice intersects with the broader arts ecology. Selected from the fields of curatorship, publishing, festivals and design, this series brings together arts workers in conversation, providing unique insights for artists and audiences to reflect on the challenges and joys of vocational practice in the arts. 

Part Two in the series brings together Anna Varendorff and Annie Wu in conversation, exploring the intersections of creative practice and design.

Anna Varendorff is an artist and sculptor. Creating installations she works by herself and also collaboratively with other artists, engaging audiences through interaction and by making opportunities for those encountering her work to experience it in perceptual or physical ways. She has a Master of Fine Art degree from Monash University, and has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally. In 2016 she began design practice A.C.V Studio in order to explore the boundary between the functional and the idiosyncratic in utilitarian objects.

Annie Wu is a Chinese Australian fashion designer, artist and researcher. She was born in Shanghai and moved to Melbourne when she was 7. She studied MA Fine Art at the Piet Zwarte Institute in Rotterdam, then worked in the field of art and design in the Netherlands for several years before returning to Australia to start her fashion project called ‘Articles of Clothing’ looking at the serial nature of the design process and the singular garment. Her work forms geometric parameters often re-visiting the value of basic everyday clothing and its after thoughts on the idea of work, labour and studio based fashion practices. She also often works collaboratively with others in exhibition as well as custom order contexts. Her work is stocked in Monk House Design, Shifting Worlds, Shop Kinobi in Melbourne, online and various stores in Japan. Annie is also currently a PHD candidate by practice in the school of Fashion and Textiles at RMIT University. 

This event is proudly supported by the City of Yarra, through the Small Project Grants program.

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