Let's Go Outside

What do we want and need from our public spaces? As the world emerges from the profound limitations imposed by the COVID-19 crisis, this reader offers a range of possibilities from the domain of art. 

With contributions from twenty-five leading Australian and international artists, writers and curators including Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera, Indonesian artist collective ruangrupa, British art historian and critic Claire Bishop and Gunditjmara artist and senior knowledge custodian Vicki Couzens, Let’s Go Outside is a timely examination of creative practices in the public realm. From negotiating space in the settler–colonial context of Australia to responding to crises in the United States, Hong Kong and New Zealand, the reader’s essays, case studies, interviews and visual contributions reveal how ideas and practices associated with remembrance, public history, urban regeneration, communality, accessibility and activism are challenging and innovating art in the public domain. 

Let’s Go Outside takes up questions from the successful 2019 symposium Let’s Go Outside: Making Art Public, presented by Monash University Museum of Art and Monash Art Projects (MAP), and reflects on the growing interest in making and presenting art outside of conventional gallery contexts.

Contributors: Michelle Antoinette, Alison Atkinson-Phillips, Claire Bishop, Daniel Browning, Tania Bruguera, Danny Butt, Clara Cheung, Madeleine Collie, Emily Cormack, Vicki Couzens, Sean Dockray, Mel Dodd, Felicity Fenner, Blair French, Brian Fuata, Mish Grigor, Oscar Ho Hing-kay, Jonathan Jones, Callum McGrath, Grace McQuilten, Carmen Papalia, Nikos Papastergiadis, Sam Petersen, ruangrupa, Zara Stanhope

Charlotte Day is the director of Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne. She has extensive experience in commissioning public artworks and developing art collections, and has held curatorial and directorial roles in galleries such as the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, the Centre for Contemporary Photography and Gertrude Contemporary. She has guest curated the Anne Landa Award, Adelaide Biennial, TarraWarra Biennial and Australian Pavilion for Venice Biennale.

Callum Morton is Professor of Fine Art at Monash University. He has exhibited widely since 1990, and in 2007 was one of three artists to represent Australia at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Morton is the director of the research lab Monash Art Projects and in 2011, his work was the subject of a 20-year survey at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.

Dr Amy Spiers is an artist and researcher based in Narrm/Birrarung-ga (Melbourne). She has presented art projects around the world, including at MUMA, the Museum für Neue Kunst, MONA FOMA and the 2015 Vienna Biennale. Spiers has published widely, including for Artlink, Public Art Dialogue and un Magazine. She is a research fellow at RMIT School of Art, and is co-editing a book on Indigenous–settler relations in Australian contemporary art and memorial practices (Springer, 2022).