Bea Rubio-Gabriel- KINGS Artist Run Initiativethe production of culture / the culture of production
Our labour is ON SPECIAL. 20% OFF. 30% OFF. 50% OFF. Culture is production. ALL SALES ARE FINAL. Work is art and art is play and play becomes work. Take a chance and see if you can catch anything. Nostalgia comes with luck of the draw. Fleeting moments on a drive to somewhere. Family conversations that cannot be rearticulated through words. Snapshots of a life story left for the taking. I can’t help but see the hard work that runs through other migrant communities, the accumulation of second-hand goods being passed down from family to new family, the memories embedded in my grandmother’s furniture. Sing me a lullaby and this too shall wash over us in time. Before loss is grief. Grief is love that does not know where to go. Sacrifice happens when the interests of the present are flown to the future. I want to go home. Where home can be made, home is found. I want to clasp our conversations close to my heart. Hold it there forever, where care can flow gently. My father was born in the valleys and my spirit crossed the sea. You cannot stop a river, no one can own the waters. Remember the river red gums, hear the song of a creek. We are held by all that is around us.
Bea Rubio-Gabriel is a writer, performance artist, and curator born in the Philippines now living and working in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Approaching writing as artform and ephemera, ergodic texts and homemade books become new modes of access and dismantle dominant knowledge and power structures. Currently interrogating systems of care and Resistance Aesthetics, they challenge current curatorial and euro-centric modes of exhibiting by approaching the curatorial as its own artistic medium; grounded in rhizomatic ways of care and collectivisation. Through performance, they explore pre-colonial writing systems (Baybayin) and how languages of the past can be activated as cultural imaginaries for a utopian present. Their research focuses on the moral economy of labour, care critique, and the politics of translation. They currently sit on the board of KINGS Artist-Run as co-director and coordinate the Emerging Writers Program. They work with Runway Journal as an editor and are part of the filipinx collective SALUHAN.
Elmira Ng, Install View. Image Courtesy: University of Melbourne.
Jordan A McKinnon, Install View. Image Courtesy: University of Melbourne.
Grace Murphy, Install View. Image Courtesy: University of Melbourne.
Keisha Yan, Install View. Image Courtesy: University of Melbourne.
Justine Walsh, Install View. Image Courtesy: University of Melbourne.
Rosa Spring Voss, Install View. Image Courtesy: University of Melbourne.
Niki Koutouzi, Install View. Image Courtesy: University of Melbourne.
Sam George, Install View. Image Courtesy: University of Melbourne.
Grace Fuentealba, Install View. Image Courtesy: University of Melbourne.
Bella Howison, Install View. Image Courtesy: University of Melbourne.
Faculty of Fine Arts and Music
University of Melbourne