addendum
/əˈdɛndəm/
noun
: addendum; plural noun: addenda
In September 2019, Abbotsford Convent's 2019 Artist in Residence, Leisa Shelton will launch a major new work - addendum; for which she will collate, publicly display and then burn her full performance archive of 30 years continuous arts practice in Australia.
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addendum; # 002.
Addendum; is not so much a statement as an action, a provocation to open the many cultural conversations we’re not having; but should.
How as Australian artists do we consider legacy, memory, linage?
As I began this project, I started to consider what has actually mattered? What lingers, has marked, continues to gnaw at my current practice and life? What have I actually valued, and what are the conditions of this valuing? What remains and has the potential to be of value to future generations and what are the mechanisms through which I can enable this ‘passing on’?
Can our practice remain a living practice through EMBODIED ARCHIVES,
through the entrusting of our work into the hands of others for whom it has mattered?
Within this consideration it is important to note the lack of Archives for Australian artists, for our work, teaching, practice and processes. All of the teaching and development of emerging artists at the VCA for example, of which I have spent the majority of my teaching years, is NOT Archived. There is no archive of all the substantial work of so many exceptional practioners across more than 50yrs. This lack is at the forefront of this questioning of HOW we mark and honor this otherwise invisible work.
This was at the heart of the earlier work – MAPPING, tracing the lineage of Australian Experimental Practice, 2014-2018 https://www.fragment31.com/mapping
MAPPING – the history of the project.
The history of Australian Performance practices, artists, events, documents and residues, are virtually non-existent, leaving its artists invisible and the next generation of artists AND audiences without a sense of lineage upon which to build.
This earlier work proceeded Scribe, and through the experience of these two extensive works has come addendum; and the current thinking that has brought me to this new work, because if as artists we don’t address this cultural gap it will just grow ever wider.
Abbotsford Convent.
August 21st, 2019.
