The Mill is thrilled to announce Holly Childs as the recipient of the Sponsored Studio for the January-June residency.
The Mill’s Sponsored Studio is a new initiative supported by Drs Geoff and Sorayya Martin, and an anonymous philanthropist beginning in 2021. Two selected artists will join our community, with each receiving 6-months of studio space and an exhibition outcome as part of The Mill Showcase.
Image courtesy of the artist
Reality Winner exhibition opening and artist talk
Join us for the launch of Holly’s exhibition Reality Winner, the outcome of work produced during her sponsored studio residency at The Mill. Reality Winner opens alongside Stitch and Resist on Friday July 2nd, followed by an artist talk with Holly in conversation with The Mill’s Visual Arts Curator Adele Sliuzas date now TBC in July.
Artist statement
Language falls asleep in dreams. Reality Winner is the name of an NSA contractor convicted under the Espionage Act for leaking a report about Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Salvador Dali was kicked out of the surrealist movement for being too surreal. Post-rational author and consultant Venkatesh Rao defines “surreal” as “underflowing with life”, as in, there isn’t enough life force to go around, but “underflowing” also has a specific meaning in computation when a value is smaller than a computer can compute. Venkatesh: "Dreams *are* an underflowing-with-life state since they occur in sleeping bodies capable of much higher flows when awake". This exhibition contains materials derived and reworked from exhibitions, performances and collaborations that I contributed to but that I could not attend "in real life" due to the pandemic and associated travel bans.
Exhibition opening
When: Friday, July 2, 5:30pm
Where: The Exhibition Space, The Mill, 154 Angas Street
Cost: Free, RSVP via eventbrite
Artist talk
When: Postponed. Dates TBC
Where: The Exhibition Space, The Mill, 154 Angas Street
Cost: Free, RSVP via eventbrite
About the artist:
Holly Childs is a writer and artist. Her research involves filtering stories of computation through frames of ecology, earth, memory, poetry, and light. In 2020, she was an associate artist at Jacuzzi dance space, Amsterdam; and alongside Gediminas Žygus she released Hydrangea (Subtext), an album exploring narrative fracture and reality bubbles. She is the author of two books: No Limit (Hologram) and Danklands (Arcadia Missa), and is a former Gertrude Contemporary studio holder (Melbourne), an alumna of The New Normal (Media, Architecture and Design) programme at Strelka Institute, Moscow, and she holds a Masters in Film, Design and Politics from Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam. She has been in residence at Arcadia Missa (London), RM (Auckland), Firstdraft (Sydney), Rupert (Vilnius), and DAR (Druskininkai). She is currently writing her third book, What Causes Flowers Not to Bloom?; teaching in the Graphic Design department at Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam; and developing Cliffhanger, a text, installation, and choreographic collaboration with Angela Goh.