Snowman Killer: a journey around Australia in search of answers with Clare McCracken
When: Saturday 26th September 2020 3PM
Where: Online via Zoom – https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83080729214
Price: FREE
This online lecture is presented as part of the WRITING & CONCEPTS Lecture Series and Publication
In the early 1980s Clare McCracken’s father took the Myrtleford Shire to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, contesting the proposed construction of a 17-metre concrete snowman. The fight over the giant snowman was lengthy and vicious: a conflict that gave McCracken her first nickname – “Snowman Killer” – which plagued her early years of school. This performance lecture combines the archive from the original snowman controversy, McCracken’s memories of the ordeal and diary snippets from a 7500 km road trip the artist took with a big carrot – a to-scale representation of the nose of the never constructed snowman – across Australia visiting Big Things. In doing so the paper interrogates the architectural and social impact of the car on rural Australia and where Big Things come from.
About Clare McCracken
Clare McCracken is a socially-engage artist and academic whose practice-led research sits at the intersection of art and cultural geography. She employs innovative, performance methodologies to research how mobility systems coproduce space, place and landscape across generations in Australia.
About WRITING AND CONCEPTS
WRITING & CONCEPTS is a lecture and publication series exploring the insights that visual arts practitioners have in to their own creative and cultural practices, and provides an opportunity for them to discuss and publish these insights in a public forum. Contributors include practitioners for whom the written form is their primary professional output and practitioners whose work manifests as exhibitions or events within the domain of contemporary art.
WRITING & CONCEPTS is produced by Future Tense and moderated by Jan van Schaik and Fjorn Butler, and supported by each of the host venues, MvS Architects, RMIT’s School of Art and School of Architecture & Urban Design, Melbourne University and ART + AUSTRALIA.
