Part 1: As the latest permutation of Westspace’s (Melbourne) Organization collaborative projects, Organisation for Cultural Exchange and Disagreement (OCED) features work by local and international artists looking at the current state of the Institutional Critique, institutionalized dissent, and utopic disarray. The exhibition uses disagreement as a discursive form of failure, and as a starting point for a contemporary discussion on the èaesthetic of administration’.

Nicole & Ryan Collaborative duo nicole + ryan both received their BFAs from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. They have exhibited their work widely, including international shows in Oslo, Berlin, Melbourne and Istanbul. As a collaborative duo, they use a wide range of media and are particularly interested in ideas of mapping that create provocative trajectories through a series of related conceptual spaces. Their current work explores issues of site specificity, and they are researching a series of interdisciplinary projects that relate to ideas involving cultural mobility, urbanism, and desire. Their practice continues to be informed by a strong interest in the shifting role of the artist working through various institutional structures. Say the artists: ”Basically we like to work across cultural contexts and find travel to be a highly motivating factor in pursuing an interdisciplinary art practice originating in cross-pollinating research processes.”

Part 2: 10/08/2004- 10/24/2004 | West Space, Melbourne

OCED (Melbourne) features work by Canadian and Australian artists looking at the current state of the Institutional Critique, institutionalised dissent, and utopic disarray. This project asks questions about the bureaucratic/administrative overlay on the development of creative ideas and their modes of formation common among artist-run initiatives, and corporate or institutional identities used by artists. These questions will be framed through the disagreement as a device intended to implicate all of those involved.