Future Future & Future Past
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Future Future & Future Past

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“It was a blind date between Peter and Antony and they seemed to hit it off really, really well, which was really lucky,” chuckles Arts House Artistic Director Angharad Wynne-Jones. Her voice is light with enthusiasm as she discusses Future Future, Future Past and the arts, just in general. “We’re [Arts House] interested in that intersection – where artists are drawn to present their work at Arts House because it is a context of a multi-art-form [and/or] multidisciplinary work where you can see the intersections of ideas and art-forms, but coming from different practices. Antony’s intrigued by those interconnections that James Batchelor [CINDERS, ISLAND] makes evident in his work around architectural practice and installation and relationships with objects.”

 

Educated at the Falmouth University and the City University London in the UK, where she completed a BA, Hons in Theatre and a Diploma in Cultural Leadership respectively, Wynne-Jones has over two decades of experience working with theatre and performance art. She was the Associate Director at the Adelaide Festival of Live Art, directed Sydney’s Performance Space, was the Chief Executive and Artistic Director at London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) and has worked with Arts House for over four years now.

 

“I feel, to me, in the time that I’ve been here at Arts House, the whole sector has shifted into a different kind of gear change. We’re finding that audiences are way more curious, interested and engaged with the new work and the levels of experimentation [at Arts House]. I think it’s no longer a marginal kind of activity – experimental art and interdisciplinary work – [and] I think it’s something where people’s energy and interests are, both as audiences and artists.”

 

Arts House has always been known for its investigation of various creative practices and experimentations, including its homoerotic exploration of sexuality in Kingdom and the creation of mood in Fluvial. It also has three biennial events: a sustainable international arts exchange program called Going Nowhere, Australia’s only contemporary dance festival, Dance Massive, and Festival of Live Art (FOLA).

 

“We’re lucky in that we’re working with Leisa Shelton [Fragment31], who’s the artist curator of Future Past,” an exhibition that will feature a catalogue of photographs, videos, documents and miscellaneous history pieces of Arts House’s ten-year life. “She’s been a curator of contemporary for some decades. She’s an incredibly informed and experience artist practitioner. We were wanting her to see the connections between artists: where one artist’s work leads to another, where one’s creativity flourishes in that project and onto another project. Leisa’s done the selection of work and she’s create a physical archive and a video archive. We’ve never had an archive prior to this project.”

 

Wynne-Jones contends that Arts House aims to broaden people’s perspective of art and “get away from the demarcations of what art is, what family-friendly theatre is”, allowing people to be “more playful and adventurous” with their world and ideas. She hopes this is communicated in Future Past.

 

“I think artists are always curious and investigative and go where the rest of us might fear to treat. One of the things we’ve noticed with initiatives like Going Nowhere, which is a program that we developed that invited artists to collaborate internationally without getting on a plane to do so, is [we had to] thinking about what it is to creative environmentally sustainable art practices that still [are] globally connective,” explains the Artistic Director. “I’ve got a 13-year-old son and a couple of weeks ago we were dashing around the centre of the Melbourne on an event called City Dash, run by Pop-Up Playground, who are a Melbourne-based analogue and online games. It was just such a great experience to be doing something that was engaging and stimulating and a way of engaging with the city with my son.

 

“I think they’ll be more of a demand for those kind of experiences [socially engaged or interactive art], which actually enable you to spend time with your family, your friends.” admits Wynne-Jones, speculating on the next decade for Arts House. She believes the venue will further explore digital art and its connectivity, nationally and globally. “[Art] needs to be something that actually reinforces and connects your community and relationships. With the current chaos of the Australian Funding scenario.” May’s Budget confirmed $110 million would be stripped from Arts Funding across Australia. “It’s really rewarding to look back and go ‘A lot happened in ten years and a lot more will happen in the next ten years’.”

 

BY AVRILLE BYLOK-COLLARD