ACCA Podcast

ACCA and Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) celebrate the launch of collaborative publication, The Second Studio: Drawing on Contemporary Art in the Gallery. Featuring a panel discussion between ACCA Artist Educator Lauren Simmonds; Amélie Scalercio – Lecturer, Coordinator of Drawing, MADA, Monash University; Andrew Atchison – Artist and educator at Monash, RMIT and Swinburne Universities and Dr Rosslynd Piggott – Artist and tutor, MADA, Monash.

Join artist Julius von Bismarck and ACCA's Senior Curator and Head of Exhibitions Shelley McSpedden as they take a tour of 'This is not the storm', on show at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.

*Please note this podcast contains coarse language ACCA presents Labels: Fashion and Identity, a panel discussion exploring the role of fashion in expressing identity. Featuring ACCA Curator Sophie Prince, Shauna Toohey (P.A.M), Jackie Wu (Wackie Ju) and Ricarda Bigolin (RMIT), the panel considers unisex and gender nonconforming fashion branding, including designing for diverse bodies and identities.

‘We need to talk’, is a bold new series of free public conversations that bring together artists, thinkers, and cultural leaders to explore the art world from every angle. For our latest event, acclaimed American artist, filmmaker and writer, Tourmaline joins ACCA curator Sophie Prince for a conversation on her exhibition Tourmaline: Transcendent. ‘We need to talk’ is a space for spirited exchange, fresh ideas, and unexpected connections.

Listen to our talk with artist r e a, Myes Russell-Cook and Judith Ryan AM on their latest exhibition 'r e a : c l a i m e d'. r e a : c l a i m e d is a focused survey of Gamilaraay, Wailwan and Biripi digital media artist, r e a, highlighting some of their most significant works from a career spanning more than three decades. r e a first exhibited at ACCA as part of the landmark group exhibition Blakness: Blak City Culture! in 1994, curated by Hetti Perkins and Clare Williamson. Now, more than thirty years later, r e a returns to ACCA with a solo exhibition that includes digital media art, sculpture, installation, and video. This podcast was recorded as part of an Artist Talk at ACCA on Saturday 13 December 2025. Image: Artist talk and book launch event, 'r e a : c l a i m e d' 2025/2026, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 2026. Photograph: Astrid Mulder

*CONTENT WARNING: Please note that this podcast includes discussions of genocide. Support is always available: Lifeline 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636 ‘We need talk’, is a bold new series of free public conversations that bring together artists, thinkers, and cultural leaders to explore the art world from every angle. For our first event, acclaimed artist Tschabalala Self joined ACCA’s Artistic Director & CEO Myles Russell-Cook for a conversation on art, identity, and the future. A new ACCA initiative, ‘We need to talk’ is a space for spirited exchange, fresh ideas, and unexpected connections.

*CONTENT WARNING: Please note that this podcast includes discussions of suicide and genocide. Support is always available: Lifeline 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636 Listen to our latest talk with artists Abdul-Rahman Abdullah, Megan Cope, Khaled Sabsabi and Ali Tahayori, from our current exhibition 'Five Acts of Love'. Take a deep dive into the discussions on their works, their practice and the ideas presented as part of the exhibition. This podcast was recorded as part of an Artist Talk at ACCA on Saturday 28 June 2025. Image: Opening night, 'Five Acts of Love' 2025, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 2025. Photograph: Carmen Zammit

Moderated by exhibition curator Elyse Goldfinch, join us as we hear from designer Lloyd Mist, and contributing writers Azza Zein, Fayen d’Evie, Tara Heffernan and Tessa Laird. The talk includes a tour of the interactive digital publication site, and readings from the writers, followed by conversations around Stefanou’s work and ideas that have been explored through the different texts.

Listen to our talk with artist Tina Stefanou, curator Elyse Goldfinch (and special guests) on her new exhibition 'You Can't See Speed'. This podcast was recorded as part of an Artist Talk at ACCA on Saturday 05 April 2025. 'Tina Stefanou: You Can’t See Speed' attends to the interconnected and multisensory experience of film beyond vision. The exhibition continues Stefanou’s interest in the voice as medium, from spoken sonic soundscapes to vocal techniques such as humming. It also expands on her methodology of deep, long-term, co-creative collaboration and socially engaged practice involving interspecies-communal-performance making. Her diasporic, working-class ethic and approach to making challenges institutions of power and capitalistic logics, embedding the commons – from the planetary to the everyday – within her life and work. Image: Tina Stefanou and Matthew Cassar, artist talk, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne 2025. Photograph: Sarah Walker

Title wall by ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Grief Ramp by ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Trickle down by ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Agritemple by ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Centipede by ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Toilets by ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

You Can't See Speed by ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Days in Doreen by ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

From the hooves by ACCA (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art)

Listen to Yhonnie Scarce and Lisa Radford in conversation with Vikki McInnes, discussing their artistic practice and publication 'The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives)'.. 'Concrete Archives' is the culmination of Radford and Scarce’s fieldwork to local and international sites of nuclear colonisation, genocide and memorialisation. Published by Person Books, 2024 The podcast was recorded at the book launch of 'The image is not nothing (Concrete Archives)' at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art on Thursday 17 October.

Listen to our panel discussion focusing on the lineages of queer histories on the present. Featuring the research and practices of three speakers, Angela Hesson, Patrice Sharkey and Elyssia Wilson-Heti, who variously engage with queer subcultures, aesthetics and histories, the panel will consider how these legacies have shaped or reshaped the diverse range of LGBTQI+ representation today. This podcast was recorded at ACCA on Wednesday 21 August 2024. Read more about the program here: https://acca.melbourne/program/panel-discussion-living-queer-histories/ Image: Nicholas Smith, 'chris' 2024, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Courtesy the artist and Haydens Gallery, Melbourne. Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Listen to our talk with artists Andy Butler and Nicholas Smith on their new works presented as part of 'Future Remains: The 2024 Macfarlane Commissions'. This podcast was recorded as part of an Artist Talk at ACCA on Saturday 13 July 2024.

Listen to our talk with artists Kim Ah Sam, Teelah George, Joel Sherwood Spring and Salote Tawale on their new works presented as part of 'Future Remains: The 2024 Macfarlane Commissions'. This podcast was recorded as part of an Artist Talk at ACCA on Saturday 29 June 2024. Please note the quality of this podcast is interrupted towards the end of this recording. We apologise for any inconvenience. Read more: https://acca.melbourne/program/artist-talks-kim-ah-sam-joel-sherwood-spring-and-salote-tawale/

Listen to ACCA's in conversation with Laure Prouvost and Annikka Kristensen, following a screening of 'They Parlaient Idéale' 2019. This program was recorded on Monday 18 March at ACMI as part of ACCA's exhibition 'Laure Prouvost: Oui Move In You'. Read more about the program here: https://acca.melbourne/program/screening-and-keynote-with-laure-prouvost-in-conversation-with-annika-kristensen/

Listen to ACCA's in conversation with Barbara Creed, author and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne alongside Lisa French, Professor and Dean in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. This program was recorded on Wednesday 28 February as part of the official book launch of Barbara Creed's new book 'Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema'. Read more about the program here: https://acca.melbourne/program/book-launch-barbara-creed-return-of-the-monstrous-feminine-feminist-new-wave-cinema-2022/

Listen to ACCA's lecture 'Building a post-revolutionary world through the 8th Yokohama Triennale' with Carol Yinghua Lu, art historian, curator, and current Director, Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum. Alongside Liu Ding, Carol Yinghua Lu is also co-Artistic Director of the 8th Yokohama Triennale 2024. Read more about the program here: https://acca.melbourne/program/building-a-post-revolutionary-world-through-the-8th-yokohama-triennale/ This recording was made at ACCA on Monday 26 February 2024.

Listen to the artist talk with Maria Kozic speaking about her iconic series 'Calendar Girls' 1999 presented in ACCA’s current exhibition 'From the other side' (9 December 2023 – 3 March 2024). Maria Kozic works across painting, sculpture, photography and film. Her practice has often drawn on the depictions and tropes of women, monsters and creatures in horror and exploitation films. Through the lens of gender and feminist politics, she is known for engaging with cult cinema, music, popular culture, advertising and DIY punk aesthetics. Maria Kozic has been included in major solo and group exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Ian Potter Gallery, University of Melbourne, Melbourne; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Posteritati Gallery, New York; Soho Arts Festival, New York. Maria Kozic is represented by Neon Parc, Melbourne. This recording was made at ACCA on Saturday 17 February 2024.

Listen to exhibition artists Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne for a talk about their new digital commission 'Offset' on the ACCA Digital Wing.

What is the sound of racialisation? How might we listen to misrecognition? What does machine error tell us about the precision of racism? And how can the tools of a racist system be used to transcribe new forms of resistance? This experimental presentation is a collaboration between feminist technoscience researcher Thao Phan and Machine Listening, an ongoing investigation and experiment in collective learning, instigated by artist Sean Dockray, legal scholar James Parker, and researcher, curator and artist Joel Stern. Part lecture and part performance, this event brings together critical work on race and algorithmic culture with new techniques for dissecting and analysing automatic speech recognition, applied to personal and public archives drawn from Thao’s life and research. It features a discussion and demonstration of the Word Processor tool, developed in 2021 by the Machine Listening team and Reduct, a US-based tech company co-founded by the artist Robert Ochschorn.

Listen to performance lectures 'Loops, Echoes, Phonophanies, and other Détournments' by Suvani Suri and 'Listening to Misrecognition' by Thao Phan, as well as an Artist Talk with Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne on their new digital commission 'Offset'.

Listen to the performance lecture 'Expositio, Iudicium, Lacrimae, or, Does an AI God Have an Ass?' by exhibiting artist Zach Blas exploring the idea of religious-un/conscious thriving in today’s tech industry. Charting his encounters with various artificial intelligence gods, Blas tells of a computational world of divine judgment and devout submission, where artificial intelligence exists alongside mystical glyphs, occult sigils, captured bodies, and corporate transcendence. Through a consideration of religious sermons, offerings of worship, and spiritual iconography, an AI religiosity is traced, in which flesh becomes biometric and emotional crying transmutes into a symbolic language of holy quantification.

Roe v. Wade is overturned while gene editing is opening entirely new reproductive futures. What does kin mean as reproductive technologies shift our relationships? How much control should we have over a birthing person’s body, and over a life before it begins?. ‘The Surrogate project began with a desire to serve as a surrogate. During the pregnancy, the parents would have an app I made that provides 24/7 access to all my biodata, and an interface to control me. So in essence, they could have complete control over my body in which their baby is growing. The past few years of the pandemic have reshaped our bodily boundaries. We’ve swabbed and spit in tubes and traded ownership of our bodily substances in an attempt to feel safe. But these fluids hold the data of our DNA, our personal information, and our identity. I’m fascinated by the ways we’re taught to interact with data, and how this shapes the way we interact with each other. Central to my work is a critique of the simultaneous technological and social systems we’re building around ourselves. What are the rules? What happens when we introduce glitches?’

Through a series of media and artworks, Mimi Ọnụọha’s performance lecture explores absence, knowledge, and how what is missing is still there.

Listen to writer and curator Laura Raicovich discuss the artworks and methodologies that inform Mithu Sen’s exhibition 'mOTHERTONGUE' in relation to Raicovich’s own practice which calls for institutional change to improve cultural spaces. This conversation was recorded at ACCA on Tuesday 16 May, 6–7pm and is presented with the support of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (KNMA). Read more about the free event here: acca.melbourne/program/laura-raicovich-undoing-and-redoing/ Image: Opening event, 'Mithu Sen: mOTHERTONGUE' 2023, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Photograph: Casey Horsfield

Listen to artist Mithu Sen in conversation with Max Delany, ACCA’s Artistic Director & CEO, alongside special guests Irina Aristarkhova, Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design and Digital Studies Institute of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Deepanjana Klein, Director of Acquisitions and Development, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA). They discuss Sen’s major solo exhibition 'mOTHERTONGUE', which surveys the past two decades of her compelling art practice, including a series of major new installations. This conversation was recorded at ACCA on Monday 24 April, 6–7pm and is presented with the support of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi (KNMA). Read more about the free event here: acca.melbourne/program/mithu-sen-in-conversation Image: Mithu Sen, Museum of unbelongings 2016. Courtesy the artist

This recording is part of a video commissioned for 'Writing in the Expanded Field IV: Touching Feeling Writing' developed in conjunction with ACCA’s exhibition ‘Paul Yore: WORD MADE FLESH’ (23 September – 20 November 2022). The digital publishing project exploring new compositional modes and publics for art writing will be released in early 2023. Credits: Rebecca Bracewell, sound editor Sofie McClure, videographer Lucinda Strahan, editor and program leader Loni Jeffs, editorial coordinator Michaela Bear, participant Ange Crawford, participant Mig Dann, participant Rachel Keir-Smith, participant Carmen-Sibha Keiso, participant Shari Kocher, participant Josephine Mead, participant Nasim Patel, participant Sofia Stavrou, participant Denise Thwaites, participant Presented in partnership with RMIT University non/fictionLab. Read more and watch the video here: https://acca.melbourne/program/writing-in-the-expanded-field-iv-touching-feeling-writing/

Listen to the in conversation with artist Paul Yore and Nick Henderson, volunteer committee member at the Australian Queer Archives, and Curator at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. They will be discussing Yore’s extensive survey exhibition 'Paul Yore: WORD MADE FLESH', unpacking the past fifteen years of his practice, with a focus on the major new immersive installation commissioned by ACCA. This lecture was recorded at ACCA on Saturday 1 October, 5–6pm. Read more about the free event here: https://acca.melbourne/program/paul-yore-in-conversation-with-nick-henderson Image: Paul Yore, 'WORD MADE FLESH' 2022, installation view, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Photograph: Andrew Curtis.

Listen to the lecture by editor Mykaela Saunders speaking on the critically acclaimed anthology 'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW'. 'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW' is the world’s first anthology of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander speculative fiction – written, curated, edited and designed by blackfellas, for blackfellas and about blackfellas. In these stories, ‘this all come back’: all those things that have been taken from us, that we collectively mourn the loss of, or attempt to recover and revive, as well as those that we thought we’d gotten rid of, that are always returning to haunt and hound us. This critically acclaimed anthology was a collective undertaking, and editor Mykaela Saunders discusses how she worked with others at each different stage of the project. From the first conception of the anthology through to publication and beyond, Mykaela has ensured that the project has been built from good relationality – the very stuff that all healthy communities are made of. Mykaela Saunders is an award-winning Koori and Lebanese writer, teacher and community researcher, and the editor of the critically acclaimed 'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW', the world’s first anthology of blackfella speculative fiction (UQP). This lecture was recorded at ACCA on Thursday 4 August 2022, 6–8pm. Read more about the free event here: https://acca.melbourne/program/writing-concepts-lecture-with-mykaela-saunders/ Image: Cover, 'THIS ALL COME BACK NOW'. Courtesy Mykaela Saunders and University of Queensland Press

Listen to our Artist Talks with Gian Manik, Jason Phu and Jahnne Pasco-White. This Artist Talk was recorded in association with the exhibition ' Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions', now showing at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne until 4 September 2022.

This Artist Talk was recorded in association with the exhibition ' Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions', now showing at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne until 4 September 2022. In this Artist Talk we hear from exhibiting artists Lucina Lane, Betty Muffler and JD Reforma.

This conversation was recorded in association with the exhibition 'Frances Barrett: Meatus', now showing at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne until 19 June 2022. In this conversation we hear from artist and curator Frances Barrett and from Daniel Mudie Cunningham, who is head of Programming at Carriageworks. 'Frances Barrett: Meatus' forms part of Suspended Moment: The Katthy Cavaliere Fellowship, an initiative designed to support a solo exhibition by Australian-based female artists who work in performance and installation. Over the past two years this has included exhibitions at the Museum of Old and New Art, and Carriageworks, and at ACCA, as well as a nationally touring iteration. In this conversation, Frances and Daniel discuss 'Meatus', as well as the influence on both their practises of the late Australian performance artist Katthy Cavaliere, whose life and work is honoured in the exhibition series.

This panel discussion explores ideas of safety, movement, surveillance, physical distancing, visibility and invisibility within Melbourne’s public spaces. Think Tank Moderator Nur Shkembi, artist, curator and PhD candidate, University of Melbourne, and Curatorial Advisory Group member for Who’s Afraid of Public Space?, is joined by esteemed local cultural contributors including Idil Ali, writer, performer, youth practitioner and community organiser; Antony Hamilton, Artistic Director, Chunky Move; Nicole Kalms, Associate Professor in Department of Design and founding director of Monash University XYX Lab; and Steven Rhall, artist, curator and PhD candidate at Monash University. This Think Tank is fourth in the series presented by ACCA and produced as part of 'Who’s Afraid of Public Space?'

Listen to Melbourne Art Library for the final in their series of discussions about the values of the public library. Reflecting on the library of written materials on public art, public culture and public space in the Reading Space: The Common Room, Melbourne Art Library discuss the purpose and complexities of developing a community library collection and archives. Forum Series: Distribution What power dynamics are at play in the distribution of information? How democratic is ‘collective’ knowledge? And how are individuals and collectives disrupting the flow of information? The Distribution forum series prods, unravels, makes-visible, and excites non-mainstream ways of information sharing. Engaging publishers, editors, and alternative institutions, the series explores active projects in Naarm/Melbourne that question the traditional flow of information. Presented by Melbourne Art Library, a not-for-profit lending library exploring art librarianship as a philosophy and mode of practice; a practice guided by collaboration, criticism, and exchange.

Creative practice researchers: Prof Carol Brown, Dr Troy Innocent, and A/Prof Linda Knight, chaired by Rachel Iampolski addresses how artistic practices offer insurgent modes for developing reconnection with urban spaces after a prolonged lockdown, and sustained anxiety around public spaces. The panel shares their practical and creative approaches for being in the world and the key role that insurgent artistic modes will play in redeveloping our confidence in public space. The experimental visual art practices, digital and gestural drawing, sound art and sonic practices, walking, creative movement, performance and installations explore emotion and affect, aesthetics, the sensorial as well as conflict, tension and congestion, and activism and play in the post-pandemic urban space. Collectively the panel advocates for the generative potential of insurgent modes for urban reconnection.

Urbanists and planners need to engage in broader and messier practices if they are to design inclusive and accessible public spaces. The production of space is as much a social and political process, as a physical one, and identities of places are often latent, contested and invisible. A new genre of artists and creative practitioners are engaging in public space, using site-based practices that catalyse new uses, build new constituencies, and amplify marginalised voices. Moderated by Mel Dodd, this roundtable event brings together five leading creative practitioners from Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) – Gene Bawden, N’arweet Carolyn Briggs, Emily Floyd, Timothy Moore and Sarah Lynn Rees – all working in the public realm, to reveal a more representative city and explore the ways we can make spaces truly public.

Listen to ACCA’s Artist Educator and Curator of the Education Space Andrew Atchison with artists Ross Coulter, Eugenia Lim and James Nguyen for a discussion about art and working in public space. This program is associated with the Education Space: Creating Art in Public, a hybrid studio, classroom and gallery designed to promote active participation with, and careful consideration of, public art practices and the diverse and inventive approaches artists adopt when creating artwork for public space.

Listen to Melbourne Art Library for the first in their series of discussions about experimental modes of sharing information. Reflecting on the library of written materials on public art, public culture and public space in the Reading Space: The Common Room, Melbourne Art Library unpack the role of the contemporary art librarian. Forum Series: Distribution What power dynamics are at play in the distribution of information? How democratic is ‘collective’ knowledge? And how are individuals and collectives disrupting the flow of information? The Distribution forum series prods, unravels, makes-visible, and excites non-mainstream ways of information sharing. Engaging publishers, editors, and alternative institutions, the series explores active projects in Naarm/Melbourne that question the traditional flow of information. Presented by Melbourne Art Library, a not-for-profit lending library exploring art librarianship as a philosophy and mode of practice; a practice guided by collaboration, criticism, and exchange.

Join artists Jon Campbell, Guled Abdulwasi, and Laresa Kosloff at ACCA as they discuss their commissioned works as part of Who’s Afraid of Public Space? offsite projects.

Join Melbourne Art Library for the second in their series of discussions about experimental modes of sharing information as part of Who's Afraid of Public Space?. The forum panel includes: Nell Fraser (Melbourne Art Library), Caroline Phillips (Womens Art Register), and Nick Henderson (Australian Queer Archives).

Join artists Sean Lynch and Mikala Dwyer, and writer Alicia Sometimes for a panel discussion about public art, presented in association with the recent launch of two major City of Melbourne temporary public art commissions in University Square, Carlton.

Join artists Simona Castricum, Michael Candy, Hoang Tran Nguyen, and Callum Morton at ACCA as they discuss their commissioned works as part of Who’s Afraid of Public Space? offsite projects.