NotFair 2016: "Sign O' the Times"

Media Release

Exhibition Title: Sign O’ the Times

Dates: 16 – 21 August 2016

Address: 524 Flinders Street, Melbourne

Despite – or perhaps because of – the collapse of the Melbourne Art Fair, the city is displaying its resilience with a barrage of independent visual arts events. Key amongst these will be the fourth incarnation of NotFair – Australia’s only art fair to feature 100 per cent unrepresented artists.

Compiled in this incarnation by independent curator Kirsten Rann, NotFair 2016 – Sign O’ the Times promises a mixture of elegant installation, searing social commentary and challenging experimentation. Rann set out to curate an exhibition that expresses the ‘Sign Of Our Times’ ‘in the way the artists are informed by history and the present as much as they are pushing their ideas, techniques and materials to new realms.’

NotFair remains a unique event in the art world calendar. ‘The concept is simple,’ says the organisation’s Chairman Paul Guest. ‘Instead of confining emerging artists in miniscule booths for commercial galleries, NotFair is a large-scale art fair that is curated and that furnishes an outlet for artists that are not represented, regardless of generation, but that arguably should be, if only someone had the guts to have a look in the first place.’

NotFair 2016 will feature the ongoing $10,000 Arkley Award, which previous winner Simon Finn has described as ‘invaluable’ for his emerging career.

NotFair 2016 is supported by the City of Melbourne Arts Grant Program.

For further information or interviews please contact Kirsten Rann on 0402 354 046

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Curator statement for Media Release

Exhibition Title: Sign O’ the Times 

Dates: 16 – 21 August 2016

Address: 524 Flinders Street, Melbourne 

Curator Kirsten Rann writes:

Being invited to curate this year’s NotFair was a wonderful opportunity for me to focus on the really fresh and exciting talent that exists across Australia in both the emerging and independent artist sectors.

This is the fertile ground in which I often find myself, so I know it well. And many working in these sectors are grateful that NotFair’s founders – Sam Leach, Tony Lloyd and Ashley Crawford – worked so hard to establish and build this interesting and challenging platform as a satellite to the Melbourne Art Fair, which has benefited a number of careers, galleries and art collections!

My approach to this year’s exhibition was to show works that I see as being ‘Right Now’ – as expressing a ‘Sign Of Our Times’ in the way the artists are informed by history and the present as much as they are pushing their ideas, techniques and materials to new realms.

Two exceptionally talented and socially aware artists the world has lost in 2016 – Prince and David Bowie – worked like this. The global impact they had on music, video and drawing attention to social issues – from global warming, war and the ‘space race’ to racism, marginalization, identity politics, poverty and death, questioning government and social responsibility in the mix – cannot be underestimated. In acknowledgement, I decided to draw a curatorial parallel to the content of Prince’s Sign O’ the Times as it directly or indirectly relates to the ideas being expressed by a number of the artists whose studios I visited in my research, and hence the (borrowed) title of the 2016 NotFair exhibition.

For further information or interviews please contact Kirsten Rann on 0402 354 046

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