In Response: Dialogues with RealTime

This exhibition marks the closure of RealTime art magazine and the launch of its archive.

A digital version of the 2019 exhibition In Response: Dialogues with RealTime is available as an online exhibition.

View the online exhibition

In Response: Dialogues with RealTime is an exhibition marking the closure of RealTime art magazine and the launch of its archive. RealTime was Australia's critical guide to national and international contemporary arts 1994-2018 and has played a crucial role in documenting and providing critical commentary on work in dance, performance, sound, music, film, digital media and visual art that carved out new terrain in those fields. Academics at UNSW have been working with the editors of RealTime Keith Gallasch and Virginia Baxter, UNSW Library and the National Library of Australia since 2017 to secure the RealTime archive in both its physical and digital form. The collaboration between UNSW and RealTime is celebrated through this exhibition that contributes to innovations at the interface between performance, the archive and the gallery.

The exhibition features the oeuvres of Martin del Amo, Branch Nebula (Lee Wilson and Mirabelle Wouters) and Vicki Van Hout, Sydney-based artists working across performance, choreography, site-specific work, video art, visual arts and writing. Coverage of the artists' work in RealTime was presented in the exhibition space through printed and spoken word alongside artefacts from relevant performances, documentation (photographic and audiovisual) and related texts (programs, other media coverage). Throughout the life of the exhibition there were three public presentations, one each month, where the artists guided us through their gallery room and provided insights into their practice and their relationship with the critical commentary surrounding their work. The exhibition closed with the launch of the RealTime archive and a brief recount of the three presentations.

In Response: Dialogues with RealTime is presented as part of UNSW Library's Exhibitions Program. The exhibition is co-curated by Dr. Erin Brannigan (Senior Lecturer SAM) and the artists in consultation with Jackson Mann, (Curator, Special Collections and Exhibitions, UNSW Library), RealTime founders and editors, Virginia Baxter and Keith Gallasch, and fellow RealTime Guardians, Dr. Caroline Wake and Gail Priest. The curators thank the RealTime team for their practical support of the project.

The RealTime Archive is a collaboration between Open City Inc., National Library of Australia, the School of the Arts and Media, UNSW and UNSW Library.

The artists involved took part in pilot archival projects at Critical Path, Australia's centre for choreographic research and dance development, as part of Dancing Sydney: Mapping Movements: Performing Histories. This research project is lead by Dr. Erin Brannigan, Dr. Amanda Card (University of Sydney) and Dr. Julie-Anne Long (Macquarie University) and is supported by Critical Path and the NSW State Library.

Open City, the publisher of RealTime, has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding body, and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy (VACS), an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

See the exhibition catalogue for essays and the list of artworks featured.

Accessibility: UNSW Main Library is wheelchair accessible.