“Out-of-Office” – a Cool Change × FORM. takeover

From 15 January to 25 February 2024, Cool Change will be ‘in residence’ at FORM Gallery, working between their usual King’s Complex location in Boorloo/Perth and the gallery/café space in Claremont.

Anticipating the onslaught of Birak/Bunuru heat and festival season burnout, CC will embrace this mutual out-of-office-ness with procrastination and time spent at the beach while presenting an exhibition, an artist residency, and a series of public programming events.

Collectively titled Out of Office, the artist-run initiative will use these activities to consider the increasingly blurred boundaries of labour and leisure, moving between the HARDLY WORKING slacker aesthetics of the recent past and the WORKING HARD grindset of late-stage capitalism.

@formgalleryandcafe
https://www.form.net.au/

TOM ROGERS
4 Spells

Cool Change is pleased to announce that Tom Rogers will be undertaking one of two residencies within Cool Change’s Out-of-Office takeover of FORM Gallery (15 January – 25 February).

Originally returning to Walyalup/Fremantle from Naarm/Melbourne to visit family and friends over the summer, this vacation-cum-working-holiday will see Tom undertake the development and production of a narrative short film centred on the creation and documentation of a magick sigil.

This new work, 4 Spells, will be made over a three-week intensive residency period and encompass the creation of four personal spells. During this time, Tom will also be admiring and enjoying the creative potential and influence of the ocean.

Partially set in a CGI medieval building/town (referencing Fremantle) and an unnamed other Modern Place (Melbourne or Perth), the work will consider art production, the internet, and australia’s post-irony landscape. Invited to participate in the sigil’s ritual and power through the medium of video, viewers will charge the sigil anew with each viewing.

Upon completion, the film will premier with a Q&A on Saturday, 3 February, before being made available to watch within an installation in the gallery for the remainder of the Cool Change takeover.

📹

Tom Rogers is an artist living on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung country. Using a variety of mediums, he explores personal relationships with nature, the media, intuition, magick, australiana, and the everyday surreal.

@70mr06
https://www.tomrogers.garden/

SOPHIE DURAND
Guesting and Hosting:
Exchange? [Meet = Meet Another + Another Meets Initial Other]

Cool Change is pleased to announce that Sophie Durand will be undertaking one of two residencies within Cool Change’s Out-of-Office takeover of FORM Gallery (15 January – 25 February).

Returning to Boorloo/Perth on a summer vacation from her studies in Vilnius, Lithuania, Sophie has brought with her a selection of artworks borrowed from friends and acquaintances in the Baltic region: Loora Kaubi, Anna Malika, Joosep Kivimae, Ieva Laskevičiūtė, Ingrid Helena Pajo, Anton Karyuk, and Aistė Marija Stankevičiūtė.

In the larger tradition of artists travelling with small physical artworks in their luggage to aid the economic presentation of national or international art, Sophie will further consider and develop an exhibition of these artworks over a three-week intensive residency period, working with local artists to facilitate various aspects of the exhibition-making process.

Bringing together a variety of mediums, including textiles, sculpture, and photography, the exhibition Guesting and Hosting: Exchange? [Meet = Meet Another + Another Meets Initial Other] will present a loose and subjective survey of an international art scene, touching on social and political issues while considering representation and responsibility, empathy and care, context and translation, and the differences between curating and facilitating an exhibition.

Upon its resolution, Sophie’s group exhibition will open with a floor talk on Saturday, 3 February, remaining open to the public for the remainder of the Cool Change takeover.

⛱️

Sophie Durand is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Vilnius, Lithuania, whose practice engages installation, collection, drawing, and text. Her projects are catalysed by experiences, observations, and artefacts in which encounters set narratives in motion, generating more extensive investigations, collections, and networks through diverse methods.

@sophiedurand.news
https://www.sophiedurand.net/

HTML & CSS FOR ARTISTS,
a Night Course with Alex Turner

Cool Change is pleased to present Alex Turner’s HTML & CSS for Artists, one of three night courses occurring throughout Cool Change’s ‘Out-of-Office’ takeover of FORM Gallery (15 January – 25 February).

Over three consecutive sessions, participants will engage with HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), the foundational languages used to make webpages and sites, explore self-publishing and the World Wide Web’s poetic potential, and experiment with web design and development as an extension of creative practice.

Through guided demonstrations, hands-on coding work, and group discussions, this three-part introductory workshop hopes to remove barriers to web coding and look towards alternative, accessible, and sustainable approaches to creating, connecting, and sharing online. The course will culminate in an opt-in online exhibition of the work produced.

For optimal class sizing, HTML & CSS for Artists will run at a capacity of 10 participants selected from an EOI process (with applications due by midnight on Friday, 19 January, and notification of success by Monday, 22 January). Participants will not require previous technical experience but must bring their own devices to work from (preferably laptops). The course will cost $25.00, which covers three three-hour sessions.

Please see our EOI for more information.

🛜

Alex Turner is an interdisciplinary artist based in Boorloo/Perth. Within their practice, they are particularly interested in exploring the relational dimension of listening and the physical experience of sound. They are currently pursuing a Master of Data Science postgraduate degree at the University of Western Australia.

@thirdswamp
https://www.a-t.com.au/

‘WORLDBUILDING’ WRITING WORKSHOP,
a Night Course with Paul Boyé & Kieron Broadhurst

6:00 – 9:00 PM • Thursday, 15 February
$10 workshop fee (by donation) • Refreshments provided

You picture the beginning of a story. (Anyone can do that.) You try to describe it. (And anyone can try.) Your mind offers up a word, or three, or a dozen. (It’s not much different from what happens when you write a friend in a letter what you did yesterday morning.) You write the words down, the first, the second, the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh—suddenly you doubt. — Samuel R. Delany, About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, & Five Interviews

As a part of Out-Of-Office, Cool Change’s residency at FORM, two writing workshops will be held for artists, arts writers, and other word-interested people.

The first workshop will be focused on ‘worldbuilding’: a set of imaginative and ideational processes for character creation, exposition, setting, and cosmic thinking. We will be asking questions such as: What role does fantasy play in writing about and around art? Is there something we can learn from our favourite sci-fi movies that can be applied to the artistic interrogation of the world we live in?

Facilitated by Paul Boyé and Kieron Broadhurst, this workshop will take its structure from a tabletop game designed to prompt writers to consider characters, themes, motivations, and worlds.

Please see Eventbrite for more information.

⚔️

@__pb_________

@kieronbroadhurst
https://www.kieronbroadhurst.com/