Become an urban beekeeper and help out the humble honey bee! Hear Swarm Trap teammates Honey Fingers and Many Many in this MMeets workshop—presented by Hotel Hotel’s new series of workshops and talks, Fix and Make—and make a swarm trap (a safe house for honey bees). You’ll learn about swarming and how swarm traps work, as well as the best time and locations to install them, before making one to take home in the hope of bee-friending your own colony. By setting up safe bee houses in our cities, o...
Feb 09, 2016•25 min
Melbourne artist and author Tai Snaith joined us under AL_A’s canopy reading from her all-time favourite picture books about homes. Done over three readings in November and one in January, Tai looked at the different ways people live—and reads from her own book 'Sticks and Stones, Animal Homes'. Perfect listen for the young ones in your life.
Feb 09, 2016•19 min
Language is all around us. We overhear people speaking on mobile phones, we read huge quantities of words online, and we see phrases and idioms on billboards, on t-shirts and in shop windows. If every word were a drop of rain, we’d drown in a flood each and every day. But what are we to do with all this language? Listen to writer, editor and printer Robert Wood in this lunchtime session exploring how key thinkers—and their ideas—have shaped the field of poetry. Through interactive exercises, we’...
Feb 09, 2016•45 min
Following her curious, caterpillar-like performances as The Buddhist Bug on opening weekend of the eighth Asia Pacific Triennial (APT8) at QAGOMA in Brisbane, Cambodian artist Anida Yoeu Ali came to MPavilion for an in-depth discussion with Sarah Bond, director of visual arts at Asialink Arts. Anida discusses her interdisciplinary practice—and, specifically, illuminates us about her APT8-commissioned works as ‘the bug’, an ongoing project that embodies ideas of otherness and hybridity, and highl...
Feb 09, 2016•59 min
Got an apartment to make? Join Chris McCue, director of architecture at Carr Design Group, for a workshop that saw an apartment collaboratively take shape, from floor plan to fittings and fixtures. Sharpen your pencils and start jotting down ideas. #MPavilion
Feb 09, 2016•51 min
What makes us Australian in 2015, individually and collectively? And how are our diverse selves represented in art, design and stories? Listen here and find the answers—via a panel discussion courtesy of video arts festival Channels and the UK’s Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT). A satellite event of the Human Futures Forum—an international “symposium on place” hosted by FACT at their headquarters in Liverpool—this talk was all about memory, time, space and contemporary identity....
Feb 08, 2016•1 hr 16 min
“If the Anthropocene is how we label our current geologic epoch, then its cultural corollary is the Anthroposcenic, an era in which our understanding of nature and culture are re-integrated.” —William L Fox, director of the Center for Art + Environment, Reno, Nevada Before his address at NGV International, William L Fox took a seat at MPavilion for a chat with Guy Abrahams (co-founder and CEO of CLIMARTE) in a lunchtime discussion about how art and nature are merging in this Anthroposcenic age. ...
Feb 08, 2016•29 min
It’s time for Consortium, round two! This brought Gertrude Contemporary, West Space, RMIT Design Hub and Next Wave presenting the second in our series of conversations about the issues within (and surrounding) emerging and experimental art and design. At our inaugural discussion, a panel of artists, writers and feminists spoke honestly and thoughtfully about art’s many invisible hands. This time around, we dived into the choppy waters of art and gentrification. Gertrude Contemporary director Emm...
Feb 08, 2016•45 min
Between 30 November and 11 December 2015, COP21—the twenty-first session of the Conference of the Parties, also known as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference—will, after twenty years of UN negotiations, aim to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. While nation leaders will make the ultimate decisions at the conference, contributions (or interventions) to the negotiations can and should come from everywhere acros...
Feb 08, 2016•42 min
Is the spirit of multiculturalism still alive in Australia today? Is it relevant? And who decides what it means, anyway? Listen back to a lively Wednesday night panel discussion featuring voices from the arts, the social sector and academia: Nikos Papastergiadis, director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures; Moya McFadzean, senior curator of migration and cultural diversity in the humanities department at Museum Victoria; Nur Shkembi, Muslim artist and curator; Nicholas Tsoutas, independent ...
Feb 08, 2016•1 hr 29 min
The spaces we inhabit—whether built, psychological or digital—are the foundations of our health and happiness. How, then, do our ever-evolving urban environments and shared public spaces guide the way we behave? And what can we learn from both science and design about the relationship between our mental and physical environments? Listen to our panellists—scientists Julie Bernhardt and Emma Burrows from the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health; behaviourologist, urbanist and designe...
Feb 05, 2016•1 hr 9 min
Today, the choreographed and performed body is not confined to the studio or a black-box theatre; instead, it occurs in spaces initially dedicated to other art forms—or even in spaces that aren’t designed for art at all. Listen in to the first in our series of three Saturday afternoon salon conversations with acclaimed French choreographer Xavier Le Roy, co-presented by Dancehouse, that aim to link dance and choreography to current issues in arts and society, highlighting the connections between...
Feb 05, 2016•1 hr 23 min
Spend your evening with Tom Bloxham, founder of award-winning United Kingdom urban regeneration company Urban Splash. With just a ‘wholehearted belief in cities’ to guide them, Tom and founding partner Jonathan Falkingham began their business by filling empty buildings in the English cities of Liverpool and Manchester. Their work—which includes the revitalisation of Sheffield’s iconic Brutalist complex Park Hill—has invariably been described as groundbreaking, innovative and masterful. The Melbo...
Feb 05, 2016•32 min
“The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.” So said William Gibson, an American-Canadian science-fiction writer (who also, incidentally, coined the term ‘cyberspace’ in his 1982 short story ‘Burning Chrome’)—and it’s this quote that has inspired the 2016 Biennale of Sydney. Helmed by artistic director Stephanie Rosenthal, the twentieth instalment of Australia’s largest contemporary arts festival will run from 18 March to 5 June 2016 across seven ‘embassies of thought’ in and a...
Feb 05, 2016•1 hr 20 min
Hear a discussion about the history of women shaping the Australian city—its buildings, spaces, and social and political agendas. Led by Parlour, an advocacy organisation dedicated to expanding the spaces for women in Australian architecture, the evening’s panellists—architectural historian Dr Karen Burns, editor and researcher Justine Clark, social historian Renate Howe, urbanist Jane Jose and architect Shelley Penn—explored the powerful roles women have played as activists, architects, planner...
Feb 01, 2016•1 hr 23 min
“In a wondrous world of riddles and hidden treasure, bumbling Jack Hare is on a race against time to deliver a message of love from the Moon to the Sun.” Pack a picnic, round up the kids and join us for a live Saturday-lunchtime reading of Kit Williams’s iconic 1979 picture book Masquerade. The magical story—which sparked a real-life treasure hunt for a golden hare necklace buried in a secret location in Britain—will be read aloud by playwright and actress Kate Mulvany, who has also adapted Kit’...
Dec 23, 2015•21 min
Six culturally and linguistically diverse spoken-word poets drop in to MPavilion in October for two Spoken Word Sessions—and this is the second. The lunchtime slams are highlights of Igniting Imagination—a collaboration between Melbourne Festival and Multicultural Arts Victoria that brings exceptional talent from Australia’s emerging, Indigenous and refugee communities to the stage. Featured in this second session: writer and storyteller Ebony MonCrief, Lebanese artist Abdul Hammoud, and MC and ...
Dec 23, 2015•52 min
What happens when designers get together for show-and-tell? How alike—or at odds—are their approaches to similar projects? Join us as Nick Wood, founder and director of London-based How About Studio and the Australian Institute of Architect’s first Droga Architect in Residence for 2015/16, chats with Melbourne design collective Sibling (represented this evening by architects Amelia Borg, Nicholas Braun and Jane Caught) about the similarities and differences across both studios’ experiential, pla...
Dec 17, 2015•45 min
You’ve heard it online, in magazines and in this very program, but what does the buzz term ‘placemaking’ actually mean and involve? Co-presented by Neometro and Australian quarterly Dumbo Feather, this panel—made up of Neometro’s director James Tutton (who is also co-founder and director of Smiling Mind) and Dumbo Feather’s community manager Madeline Lucas—will deconstruct the word and much more in this discussion about urban social initiatives that encourage collective ownership of inner-city c...
Dec 17, 2015•33 min
The VCA’s Art, Social and Spatial Practice (ASSP) research cluster brings its salon-style Food for Thought series to MPavilion—and expands it. Hosted by Performing Mobilities’ James Oliver and Mick Douglas, this pop-up forum with Brooklyn-based artist Marshall Weber and Sydney-based “anarchitect” Keg de Souza will investigate the potential of both the material and social production of art as object, performance, spatial practice or relational experience. Where and how do public conversation, art...
Dec 17, 2015•47 min
Pack a picnic, round up the kids and join us for a lunchtime reading of John Marsden and Shaun Tan’s popular picture book The Rabbits—a partly allegorical fable about colonisation told through the eyes of the colonised, but with an unseen narrator. The fable describes the coming of ‘rabbits’—an encounter that is at first friendly and curious, but later darkens as it becomes apparent that the visitors are not who they once appeared to be.
Dec 16, 2015•9 min
Join London Design Festival director Ben Evans and Google Creative Lab director Tom Uglow for the launch of 25XDesign. Conceived by Ben and developed by Google’s Creative Lab, it’s an interactive digital event created to celebrate design and place. MPavilion’s 2015 architect Amanda Levete has contributed her 25 Melbourne design inspirations—from Ugo Rondinone’s ‘Our Magic Hour’ in South Yarra to Walter Burley Griffin’s imposing Newman College façade and Napier Waller’s 1933 Newspaper House mosai...
Dec 16, 2015•33 min
What goes into commissioning and designing a contemporary cultural space? How should we be thinking about innovation in this context? What are the opportunities that come intertwined with a brief to design a temporary building? Our first MTalks event traces the evolution of MPavilion in its second iteration—from brief to build. Hear from MPavilion’s patron Naomi Milgrom, whose foundation initiated the commissions; acclaimed architect Amanda Levete, whose London-based practice designed our 2015/1...
Dec 16, 2015•52 min
This panel brings together architects a range of positions—local, national and international—to review and debate the role of the government architect. The panel includes Ian Gilzean, Scottish government architect; Jill Garner, acting Victorian government architect; John Denton, former Victorian government architect; and Helen Lochhead, assistant NSW government architect. Moderated by Andrew Mackenzie, director of the architecture competitions organiser CityLab, and director of the architecture ...
Mar 14, 2015•1 hr 20 min
Chris Sanderson (of The Future Laboratory) presents a lecture on ‘Designing our future selves: How life in the 21st century is re-modelling what it means to be human’. Technology doesn’t transform society; society transforms itself, using technology. This insight informs a whistle-stop 30-minute journey into the new social mores and trends that are highlighting how the tech-obsessed 21st-century citizen is redesigning expectations around ownership, sharing, a sense of self and an obligation to s...
Mar 14, 2015•57 min
Discover the role of architecture and design in modern city life firsthand from the people who are making Melbourne vibrant. In this MTalk, Dr Flavia Marcello and Bridgette Engeler Newbury—both leading researchers at Swinburne University—discuss the evolution of brands, branding and branded environments, from the shopping arcades of nineteenth-century Paris to the spaces of today that are the interfaces between global ideas and local actions. How have brands developed from something burned on ca...
Mar 14, 2015•42 min
De Anima, by Brook Andrew, was a major new video installation on display at RMIT Design Hub from 12 December 2014 to 14 February 2015. In this MTalk, presented by RMIT Design Hub, Justin Shoulder and Mama Alto revisit their performances from De Anima in a live response to the film’s composition by Theodore Wohng. Their performance is followed by a Q&A with Brook Andrew, Theodore Wohng, Justin Shoulder, Mama Alto and RMIT Design Hub curators Fleur Watson and Kate Rhodes. http://www.mpavilion....
Mar 14, 2015•52 min
Melbourne School of Design (MSD) presents an MTalks session in collaboration with Tract Consulting. During October 2014, Tract’s national practice ran a design forum called ‘Rethinking the strip’ that focused on the challenges facing traditional strip-shopping precincts. Tract adopted a shop for the month of October and invited an MSD design studio—including architects, landscape architects and urban design students—to test ideas and exchange thoughts on the future of a declining retail strip. T...
Mar 14, 2015•1 hr 16 min
Over the last twenty-five years, the increased presence of fashion in museums across the world has generated debate about curatorial modes, as well as about how fashion is understood when presented in these modes. In this MTalk, curator and fashion commentator Robyn Healy discusses non-customary exhibition practices—those that don‘t just display fashion via linear dress histories. Touching on numerous approaches, from historical imagination to design process, she considers how different arrangem...
Mar 14, 2015•57 min
On the eve of Chinese artist Yang Fudong’s solo exhibition at ACMI, MPavilion presented a prelude discussion about his stylised usage of architectural motifs. The discussion, moderated by MPavilion senior curator Natalie King, also investigated the proliferation and design agendas of new museums in China. Guest speakers include Li Ning, curator of the Academic & Research Department at the Shanghai Art Museum, and Claire Roberts, historian of Chinese art and senior lecturer of Art History at ...
Mar 14, 2015•58 min
