ART AFTER DARK
Artist as Animal by Jen Valender 

Bunjil Place Outdoor Screen
1 June – 30 June
5.00 pm - 7.00 pm  (daily)

This Winter the Art After Dark program continues on the Outdoor Screen exhibits the beautiful work Artist as Animal by Jen Valender.

_{Image Credit: Artist as Animal, Jen Valender, DP: Gene Alberts, colourist: Ted Deacey,  Australia, 2024, 8 minutes, image courtesy of the artist.}

Curatorial Statement

Artist as Animal sees the artist, Jen Valender, endure an allergen performance across a sea of pollenated, waterlogged, canola fields while wearing high heels and carrying a harp.
Artist as Animal seeks to generate new understandings of farm work and cultural experiences of the landscape by inviting the viewer to consider how the art experience, in its intentionality, communicates both the material conditions of its own making and those of the world it exists within.
Developed during an Art + Ecology Residency hosted by the Centre of Visual Art (CoVA) at the University of Melbourne’s Agricultural College in regional Victoria, this work is inspired by Valender’s experience of the sights, sounds, stories, and serendipitous encounters with residents of all species at the campus.

Artist's Statement

Created during a residency at Dookie Agricultural College in regional Victoria, Artist as Animal sees the artist engage in an endurance allergen performance across pollenated, waterlogged canola fields while wearing high heels and carrying an 8kg cattle gut strung harp. The presence and celebration of the changing role of women in Australia during the first and second world wars can be seen peppered throughout the college’s archives. Black and white photos of a class held at the farm of women in weighted skirts and muddied high heels offered altered perceptions of farm work experiences. This performance embodies a re-enactment of human and nonhuman labour, while echoing the absurdity of culture being forced upon nature and country.

Jen Valender

Jen Valender is an Aotearoa New Zealand-born, Naarm Melbourne-based, multidisciplinary artist who creates performative encounters on and with the landscape that raise questions about the relationship between art and the natural world. Through moving image, she explores the ways in which art may be used as a navigational tool to investigate human and nonhuman connections.
Valender has exhibited widely in galleries, museums and public spaces in Australia, France, Germany, South Africa, and Portugal. She holds a Master of Fine Arts (Research) from the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne and is an ongoing ACMI X resident artist at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. She is currently a PhD candidate at the VCA.
@jenvalender
www.jenvalender.com