ABOUT US

Founded in August 2001, Conical Inc is a non-profit contemporary art centre directed by Adrien Allen with support from a core committee of 6 practising artists. Collectively we strive for a consistent excellence in presenting & producing innovative national & international exhibitions & projects. Our program encompasses a broad range of disciplines including: live art, sound, photography, screen art, sculpture, painting, installation & architectural/design disciplines with a particular emphasis on practices that challenge the parameters of defined categories.

Committee

Conical Inc. is comprised of six visual artists who all participate in selection and programming. All members exhibit widely and actively contribute to artist-run culture on a local, national and occasionally international level.

Current committee members are:

Adrien Allen (Director)

Adrien Allen is the founder and director of Conical Inc. His somewhat obsessive musings on the nature of place-bound identity currently find him unable to imagine a creative future without attachment and obligation. His notion of practice is now located in the specific site of Conical as a homespun social and architectural sculpture.

Previously Adrien’s practice drew on the ‘ready-made narrative’ between modes of presentation and architectural space (Medium Density at Conical 2003, doordoor at Westspace 2003, 3 Attachments in Projects One at VCA Gallery 2003 and Belief in the Opaque in Combined Operations/Joint Operations at Conical 2004).

Adrien was born in Melbourne and studied painting at Victorian College of the Arts - graduating sometime in the mid 80’s. He continued his education at the VCA with a post-graduate diploma in 1999 and a Master of Fine Arts by research in 2003 where
he indulged a morbid (and moribund) fascination with WWII military architecture. The tenuous relationship between the defensive/offensive bunker and the art-historical monochrome still distracts him. Like most of us he raids tombs.

Shaun Elstob

Shaun's most recent work, in collaboration with Viveka Marksjo, exhibited at Conical in May, 2005 was Indemnity. This exhibition playfully subjected the interior space of the gallery to the deleterious effects of flooding. This narrative served to introduce foreign elements into a familiar space with the potential for the precipitation of a schizm in the relationship between percipient and perception and an ensuing sense of dislocation or disorientation.

Indemnity is part of an Elastic (UK) Conical exchange program, and will be exhibited at Elastic in February/March 2006.

Shaun was born in Melbourne, 1967, and studied painting, installation and performance at Victoria College, Prahran (graduated 1991) before continuing his education with a Graduate Diploma (1995) and a Master of Arts in Animation and Interactive Multimedia at R.M.I.T. (2003).

Katie Lee

Having been born in the penal settlement of Hobart Tasmania, Katie Lee took an anomalous interest in 19th Century Gym equipment, developed a penchant for steel and a healthy respect for the grid. Lee’s persistent critique of order and structure has resulted in multi- associative installations; psychological spaces that draw together aspects of the built world, systems, repetition and methodical discipline.

Always ready to challenge order and authority, question dominant models and revisit historical fact Lee is completing a MA at RMIT, and attempting to apply administrative systems to all aspects of her life.

Jason Maling

Jason would love to think of himself as a live artist, but he seems to do a lot of drawing and measuring which often leads to making things. He is very fond of people playing with his things, especially if they wear nicely coordinated outfits. In fact, Jason is unashamedly voyeuristic and really likes nothing better than subjecting people to gruelling sessions of ‘playtime’ just to see what happens.

He has a long and distinguished international career as a self-indulgent hit and run artist, which can be more than legitimised as cultural cachet due to having received a Master of Fine Arts from the Slade School in London.

Jason continues to pretend to himself that presentation can be defeated and is currently in the process of becoming an oracle.

David Simpkin

David was partially known for living in a 2.4 x 0.4x 0.4 metre box for seven days as a response to a painting field trip in the NSW Warrumbungle National Park. Building several Merzbau-esque environments through the institutional years he quickly graduated through the levels and packed his aspirations around performative actions in Iceland.

Generally interpreted as being way too self-referential within “the arts context”, he had by then been burnt, buried, kicked, cut, fractured, held hostage, accused of occult operations and of course asked to explain his actions before the courts.

For several years he worked in collaboration under the moniker of Revault /Revolt on a project that attempted to reinvest Melbourne with the colour yellow. For a while there they pushed at old bruises, examined historical stains and studied an ideology of the abstained. Like many of us David resorted to teaching.

He spent more time getting off mailing lists than joining them. When squeezed upon by soft-line rationality, he graduated again through the VCA and welcomed an involvement to work with Conical.

A recent sojourn in Paris challenged his commitment towards his practice. He has a compulsion for gathering idiosyncratic objects, texts and references that provide and sustain an alibi for his sensibility.

Harriet Turnbull

Harriet was born in New Zealand and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Canterbury University in Christchurch New Zealand. In 2003 she completed a Master of Fine Arts by research at the Victorian College of the Arts, where she was awarded the National Gallery of Victoria Women’s Association Postgraduate Award.

Harriet’s research into intimacy and the experiencing of intimacy has lead to the development of a number of artistic alter - egos, like Bunny. Harriet has exhibited widely in Melbourne with shows at Seventh, Bus, Kings ARI and VCA galleries, as well as live performances at the Abbotsford convent and the Melbourne Docklands.