Tony Schwensen 

6 - 17 January

Tony Schwensen’s intervention artwork is a memorial to Matthew Wood (1969-1992), a former student who died from an AIDS related illness in 1992. Matthew Wood studied alongside Schwensen and was the first student to exhibit in the original Space YZ gallery at UWS Nepean.

To learn more about Matthew Wood, read Tony Schwensen’s Space YZ reader piece ‘On Matthew Wood’ here.

Ryan Dunshea

1 - 7 February

In recreating his own commutes, Ryan Dunshea’s intervention artwork aims to retrace his paths over his three years at UWS. Commuting to and from the Kingswood campus was both a personal and collective experience for students at UWS. The endless M4. Carpooling. The train over the mountains. The Western Line. The walk to campus from Kingswood Station. Commuting and mapping have appeared often in Dunshea’s work over the years as both a means to retrace his steps and to imply journey, transition and being perpetually en route.

Claire Conroy

22 - 28 February

Claire Conroy’s intervention artwork combines a collection of archival material that she initially captured with her caravan pinhole camera. Traced layered and cut, the analogue images are now part of this collaged artwork that features a re imagined figure in an allegory about resilience in the arts.

Elin Howe

18 - 24 January

Responding to the 2018 AGNSW exhibition The Lady and the Unicorn, Elin Howe’s intervention artwork creates a fictional correspondence between two tapestry figures: the woman in the Touch tapestry from the Cluny Museum, Paris; and the handmaiden in the damaged fifth tapestry, The Hunt of the Unicorn, Cloisters Museum, New York. Both tapestries were exhibited together at the Masters of Tapestry exhibition at the MET, New York in 1973-74, furnishing the rationale for the two protagonists to reconnect. They do this by beguiling an Australian needlewoman (Howe) into stitching their correspondence.

Fiona Davies, Davida Wiley & Greg Ferris

8 - 14 February

Fiona Davies, Greg Ferris and Davida Wiley’s intervention wall features a collaborative video work that functions as a 'call and response', primarily to Davies work, through movement, colour and duration. The intervention provided the artists with the opportunity to work alongside each other once again after 35 years.  

Dysfunctional Feed

1 - 7 March

Dysfunctional Feed were a collective of artists who formed out of the Fine Arts and Electronic Arts degrees at UWS in 2004, and later included members from CoFA at UNSW. Dysfunctional Feed’s project for the intervention wall includes a monitor that displays ‘Microworks’ - a series of thirty-second videos, a second monitor that showcases long-form works made by Dysfunctional Feed’s members, and a collection of replicated photographs and ephemera from the period.

The culture of collaboration and cross-disciplinary practice fostered by the Fine Arts and Electronic Arts degree was central to Dysfunctional Feed’s ethos, and flowed throughout their output. Participating Dysfunctional Feed members include: Monika Brooks, Samuel Bruce, Toby Burvill, Luke Callaghan, Tracey Cole, Adam Costenoble, Sarah Davies, Cameron Foster, Stephen Fox, Anastasia Freeman, Daniel Green, Brendan Halbish, Torunn Higgins, Daniel Kotja, Ivar Lehtsalu, Ivan Lisyak, Emily Morandini, James Murchison, Peter Newman, William Noble, Luke Stacey, Alex White, Emma Wilson.

Ana Carter

25 - 31 January

Using a 1950s armchair as the basis of her work, Ana Carter takes a step back to her Creative Strategies unit, exploring the idea of starting with an object and then redeveloping it. The armchair, having sat in Ana Carter’s studio for 10 years, is now a torn and tattered personal scratching post for her son’s cat. The chair (the starting point) symbolises the structure that was, and the frame (the finishing point) symbolises the construction of the new. What develops in-between is the process of Carter’s intervention artwork.

When Carter started university she was in her second year of therapy for post-natal depression. Now, amidst her second year of therapy and a recent diagnosis of Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension, she sees her life as a journey to understand and redevelop her new limitations.

Daniel Green

15 - 21 February 

Now residing in the UK and unable to travel and physically participate in the Space YZ exhibition, Daniel Green’s intervention work aims to address the physical distance caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Inherently a work about myth, memory and Green’s subjective experience of being in art school, the work attempts to create and document an oral history of those who passed through Z block while it was in operation. The work, which relays a live feed from the video conferencing platform Gather, encourages former students to share and connect.

The Anti-Annual

Initiated by Vaughan O’Connor

8 - 14 March

To echo the spirit of UWS as active, rather than nostalgic, Vaughan Wozniac O’Connor has turned over the Intervention Wall to a group of art student activists from UNSW Art & Design. Facing drastic cuts, fee hikes and restructures to art education, the students use the opportunity to showcase and archive the political contexts of the Anti-Annual, #StandWithTess and the ongoing UNSW Art & Design boycott.

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Art schools are disappearing across NSW; Western Sydney University, Newcastle University, the 2016 closure attempt at SCA, cuts to ANU, and dissolving UNSW Art & Design (formerly COFA) into the new Art, Architecture & Design mega-faculty are all part of a concerning pattern where neoliberal values are being prioritised at the cost of art education, jobs, community and culture. 

The unexplained redundancy of Indigenous director of programs, Tess Allas, and the failure to fill her role highlighted the concerning priorities of UNSW management. This decision by the university came in contradiction to its own Indigenous strategy - which committed 50 million dollars and 90 Indigenous academic staff across the university by 2021.  

The unexplained redundancy resulted in an ongoing boycott of the UNSW galleries, the #StandWithTess campaign and the recent Anti-Annual counter grad exhibition.

Our actions operate both as a demonstration against UNSW management, as well as a celebration of artistic achievement, strength and solidarity in a time of deep precarity for the Arts in NSW.