Gabrielle de Vietri

Founded in 2012 with Will Foster, A Centre for Everything is a collaborative project that brings together people and ideas. Each event groups a triad of topics that manifest as workshops, readings, site-responsive investigations, performances, lectures, discussions and communal meals. A Centre for Everything is an ongoing experiment in creative pedagogy and a curated series of politically-engaged events.

Photos: Caitlin Littlewood unless stated

Alternative Education, The Nailhouse & Party Food Politics (2013), commissioned by Monash University Musuem of Art

Mafia, Fungi & Soup (2014)

Rocket Stoves, Can Bread & Persuasion (2015)

Solar Circles, Crepe Circles and Munari's Circles (2015)

Panel on Palestine, Geography & Maklouba (2014)

Some questions, A few stories & Albanian dinner (2016) commissioned by Shepparton Art Gallery

For further details and program visit A Centre for Everything.

A temporary public artwork for Public Art Melbourne and Melbourne Festival. Through a process of embodied research, Gabrielle de Vietri and Will Foster discovered and developed the unspoken language used by traders at Melbourne's Vic Market. From everyday dealings to embedded cultural codes, hand gestures are used to direct, connect, communicate and play across the stalls of the marketplace.

Participants are invited to explore the contested past, present and future of the site in a hands-on self-guided tour.

Visible Hands was made with participation of:
Rocco Tripodi – Market Juice, Ivano Guseli – Caricatures by Ivano, Leo Elias – the Engraver, Sharon Brooks – The Traditional Pasta Shop, Cathy Ford and Mick Foggie – Melbourne Poultry, Joanne Davis, Diana Stathis, Will from Rare earth Rock, Marshal and Franck from Rewine, John from QVM Mobile, Irene from Victoria Market Gifts, Bruce from Bruce Goose, Kris from Art and Groove, Leo and Mathew from Eggsperts, Cameron and Robyn fron Inner Essentials, Morris from ME Fashions, Kris from Orchard Mueslis, Callum from 3rd Generation, Carmel from Il Fruittivendolo, Lawrence from Andrew’s Bread, Linda from Sardes Quality Meats, Brendan from Swords Wines

Project assistants
Lauren Cruickshank, Kiah Pullens, Alejandra Díaz, Haydn Louis Allen, Liam David Denny
Rasha Tayeh, Lauren Cruickshank, Simon Massey di Vallazza, Brigid Hansen, Lachlan Anthony

Volunteers
Jenny Raff, Clare De Silva

Install
Lucas Maddock, David the boxman

Photography
Bryony Jackson

Supported by City of Melbourne, presented as part of the Melbourne Festival

Lecture-performance
40 minutes
Courtesy of the artist

Documentation at MPavilion, Melbourne
Performance documentation: Timothy Hillier

A Hawk Can Read a Newspaper a Mile Away is a lecture-performance about the site of speech, the politics of display, the performance of politics, the etymology of understand, missing Egyptian noses, the act of reading, divine intervention, haptic communication, tree planting, windsucking, and rabies. Things spoken during this performance may or may not be true.

Single-channel video projection with sound
29 minutes 50 seconds

A four-part fantasy fairy-tale and a new language elicited from the perverted non-words of the online turing test, CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). The story of Desmodowe is narrated as non-sensical words flash across the screen to tell a steamy sci-fi romance in which context, intonation, and music prompt the viewer to read meaning into meaningless words.

Chapters one to three are available here. Chapter four is exhibition for only.

This project was supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments and completed as part of the Künstlerhaus Bethanien residency programme. 

A project to develop a new Aussie Rules football game involving three teams playing against each other simultaneously. The rules of the three-team game were developed over a six-month consultation period with players, coaches, presidents and fans of the local footy clubs, vox-pops in Horsham’s town centre, and town meetings to discuss and vote on rules and finally, synthesised the proposals into a working game format.

Three Teams was made in collaboration with:
Taylors Lake Football Club
Noradjuha-Quantong Football Club
Horsham RSL Diggers Football Club
and the Wimmera Umpires Association

Project assistant: Renae Fomiatti
Video editor: Lydia Springhall
Camera and sound:
Kiarash Zangeneh
Lydia Springhall
James Phillips
Filip Milovac
Commentary: Richard Higgins and Tony Hardy

With the participation and support of the Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Yariv Field, Corey Mahar and Victoria Lucy, Charee and Dan Bolwell, Rachel Goldsworthy and Orla Mundy, Kate and Gregor Heard, Horsham Rural City Council, Dock Lake Reserve Committee, Horsham RSL, Kritta, Copy Boy and Western Vic Football Association.

This project has been assisted by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria and the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body, and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

400 posters
Collaboration with Will Foster
Commissioned by Climarte

CLIMARTE commissioned eleven Australian artists to design posters that engage the community on climate change action, and convey the strength, optimism, and urgency we need to move to a clean, renewable energy future. During May 2016 hundreds of AO size posters will be printed and displayed on poster sites around Melbourne.

Hazelwood is Australia’s most pressing issue with regards to climate change. At Melbourne’s doorstep the most polluting power station in Australia – and the third most polluting in the world. Hazelwood contributes to 3% of Australia’s carbon emissions. In 2014 the open cut mine set fire, causing one of the worst environmental and public health disasters in Australian history. The plant and the methods it uses are archaic and dangerous, but surprisingly, not many people know about its existence. Maybe Hazelwood needs a face.

In order to have a credible climate change policy, Australia must replace coal-fired power stations, starting with Hazelwood, with clean, safe renewable energy.

theconversation.com/the-poster-is-political-how-artists-are-challenging-climate-change-58740

climarte.org/poster-project-2016/

The Garden of Bad Flowers is a garden installation of plants that have been given negative symbolic meanings according to the 19th century publication "The Language of Flowers". In the world of floriography, lavender means distrust, lobelia represents malevolence, cypress symbolises mourning, basil, hatred and mandrake, horror. Based on mythical, medicinal, political, anecdotal, religious and literary sources, the plants and their attributes are arranged over 18 garden beds with in-built seating in Sydney’s Earlwood Farm.

Download the garden map with a list of the plants, descriptions and meanings here.

The Garden of Bad Flowers was originally conceived be in the guards' house on the top of Cockatoo Island for the 2014 Biennale of Sydney, however, it was removed from the exhibition before it opened due to ethical reasons. It was relocated to Earlwood Farm where it now has a permanent home. For more information, see Working Group blog.

This project was supported by Arts Victoria.

The Rules According to Yash and Adit, 2011
screen print on linen
Edition of 100

Things I've Learnt, 2011
video and spoken performance
8 minutes 25 seconds (video)

Participants: Caleb Bolwell, Molly Bolwell, Makeali Clarke, Jackson Clarke, Rain Rathjen, Narayan Rathjen, Sapphira Williams, Yash Sood, Adit Sood

Camera: Brigitte Muir
Project Assistant: Renae Fomiatti
Filmed at The Vulcan, Horsham 2011

Commissioned for ACCA Regional Touring #2

Originally created in 2006
Re-created for Shepparton Art Gallery 2016

Dumpster Feast began as a personal mission to recover food waste from commercial bins. A relatively common undertaking among students, activists and environmentalists, dumpster diving is a clandestine activity that feeds the hungry and reduces landfill while revealing a shocking truth about the food industry. With a nod to Flemish Baroque painting, Dumpster Feast is an exaggerated still-life that opulently displays the haul of one night of dumpster diving in Melbourne's inner northern suburbs. It forces the viewer to consider the tragic decadence of a society whose habits of production and consumption create 7.5 million tonnes of food waste every year.

*National Food Waste Report, 2009