Room to Create Artist-in-Residence, Andrew Atchison will be exhibiting a one-day installation around the Courage sculpture by another Melbourne artist Will Eicholtz at Whitlam Place, Napier St, Fitzroy.

The artwork Courage was commissioned by the Yarra City Council in 2014, to honour the contribution, culture and diversity of the LGBTQI community, and is dedicated to the legacy of Ralph McLean (1957-2010). Ralph was Australia’s first openly gay Lord Mayor (City of Fitzroy, 1984), and a leading advocate for gay rights, social justice and the arts.

I am interested in installing a temporary, non-invasive installation around the Courage sculpture for one day. I have installed two similar iterations around existing statues that used colour to suggest queerness within the 'straight' narratives represented by those statues by tinting some perspectives onto each statue. This version would be different as it would consist of opaque aluminium discs suspended around the perimeter of the Courage sculpture. These discs would conceal certain views of the sculpture to suggest possible 'grey areas' in queer identity, or sculptural 'redactions' of the version of queer identity represented by the statue. This idea is not in opposition to the sculpture, but intended as an annotation or dialogue with the narratives of queerness/gay identity that Courage represents.
-Andrew Atchison, Room to Create Artist in Residence

Andrew Atchison is an artist, writer and educator currently based in Melbourne. He works across sculpture, drawing, writing, public art projects and teaching. Most recently his practice has been devoted to experimenting with how sculpture might be queered through processes of abstraction, and exploring how to represent queerness in the absence of either bodily figuration or tropes associated with the art-historical category of Queer Art. This exploration is motivated by an interest in finding ways of expressing queerness that are liberated from rigidly defined, fixed categories of identity. This reflects a stance that is critical of dominant forms of queer identity as restrictive and reductive of the potential for myriad forms that queerness – in art or personal expression - does or might take. A branch of this investigation focuses upon art in public space – specifically, how the language and communicative functions of public statuary and sculpture operate to inflect public space.

Atchison completed a Master of Fine Arts (research) at MADA, Monash University in 2018. He has exhibited extensively including at Testing Grounds, Greenwood Street Projects, Light Projects, West Space, Kings ARI, Seventh, First Site Gallery, and Next Wave and Midsumma Festivals. In addition, he has completed several artworks for public space, including a public art commission for City of Melbourne. He currently holds the position of Artist Educator at The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. 

Atchison used his residency at the Florence Peel Centre to further explore how queerness might be connoted through abstract visual language, focusing upon sculptural expressions. This installation is one outcome of this residency.

Please feel free to join the artist Andrew Atchison by on Saturday 13th April.

Date: Saturday 13 April
Time: 12pm-4pm
Where: Courage sculpture, Whitlam Place, 209-217 Napier St, Fitzroy.

More information:

Room to Create