About IASKA
IASKA is a non-for profit organisation that runs an international program of visual arts/new media projects that are based on an in-depth engagement with specific local social and environmental situations. Our activities comprise context-specific projects, solo exhibitions, touring group exhibitions, publications, educational and mentoring programs. IASKA is widely regarded as one of the most original and innovative art organisation to have emerged in Australia in the last decade.
In the past IASKA's activities were carried out mainly - but not exclusively - in and around the small town of Kellerberrin, 210 kilometres east of Perth. Our new program, however, will be delivered through a global/local network connecting communities throughout Western Australia as well as several overseas locations. Geographically separate situation-specific projects will be the ‘nodes’ of such network and the participants in a dialogue between culturally and geographically distant places.
The new program will centre on a biennial event focusing on modes of practice that aim to produce work by engaging with, and intervening in, everyday social relations and situations. Special emphasis will be given to approaches that attempt to open art to other – non artistic - forms of social practice such as science and technology, social activism, design and architecture. This approach is representative of important aspects of the contemporary international art scene and reflects the artistic line that IASKA has been developing since its inception.
The new event-focused program integrates into a cohesive whole the types of activity that IASKA has very successfully carried out in the past, such as residencies, context specific works, collaborations with non artistic organisations, national touring exhibitions, local and international partnerships, mentoring and educational programs.
Our program aims to:
- Focus on artistic practices that intervene in the fabric of everyday life and straddle the boundaries of art, science and technology, social activism, design and architecture. The emphasis is on works that are more than objects of contemplation or means of individual self-expression but that result instead from a process of negotiation and consultation between artists and specific social groups. Preference is given to projects involving a cross-disciplinary dialogue between art and non-artistic social practices.
- Develop a new type of international perennial event that is intended to offer an alternative to the proliferation of international art biennials that exhibit works that often have little or no relationship to the to places in which they are exhibited.
- Address a key issue in contemporary art: how to balance the need to facilitate the creation of works that are meaningfully related to the specificity of a social situation or context, with the necessity to reach broad audiences through conventional gallery presentation.
- Implement a collegial organisational and curatorial structure involving the participation of a network of partner organisations.
- Promote a dialogue between realities that are usually separated by cultural, social, economic, ethnic or geographical distances.