Fayen d’Evie, Luke Rigby and Yue Yang
Image Description: Upper case letters spell out OPEN HOUSE / OPEN ACCESS with a typeface Variegate. Each of the letterforms is shaped with black triplicate lines, like structural walls of a building. These outlines are discontinuous, disrupted by openings in the walls. Within the letterforms, small line segments cluster and mingle. Typography designed by Sheereen Perrin.
Interdependence is central to the radical restructuring of power.
— Carmen Papalia
Fayen d’Evie’s contribution, in collaboration with designers Luke Rigby and Yue Yang, and students from the RMIT Masters of Communication Design Experimental Typography Workshop, is this exhibition’s unofficial eighth project. Rather than occurring at one site, d’Evie has engaged in what we have called, tongue slightly in cheek, an access consultancy for Take Hold of the Clouds. This process has been inspired by the conceptual and practical rubric of what she describes as Open House / Open Access, following Vancouver-based collaborator Carmen Papalia’s 2015 Open Access manifesto, which approaches access as a temporary, collectively-held space. Throughout the many months of planning and developing this exhibition, d’Evie has participated in conversations, orienting us to questions of access when she felt it was needed. Rather than a top-down model of implementing access at an institutional level, d’Evie has taken a different approach, responding instead to each artist’s project, and the site at which the work is installed. She has also worked closely with Rigby and Yang on their design program for Take Hold of the Clouds, which includes a print publication, microsite and wayfinding. With d’Evie’s guidance, as well as early input provided by Stuart Geddes and Trent Walter, we commissioned seven texts about the sites selected for the exhibition. Rather than a conventional text about each building or site, with d’Evie’s encouragement we invited authors to write about the sites in an embodied, multisensorial way. The texts function as a kind of experimental wayfinding, situating the visitor, affectively, sensorially, historically and politically, as they approach and move through the site. The written texts are audio-recorded, and can be listened to, on the microsite or via QR codes in this publication. — TM
References
Carmen Papalia and Fayen d’Evie, with Luke King, 2021. Spoken and signed text, collaborative performance by West Space staff and Disorganising collaborators. “We get in touch with things at the point they break down // Even in the absence of spectators and audiences, dust circulates…”, West Space, Melbourne.
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Fayen d’Evie is an artist and writer, born in Malaysia, raised in Aotearoa New Zealand, and now living in the bushlands of unceded Jaara country, Australia. Fayen’s projects are often collaborative, and resist spectatorship by inviting audiences into sensorial readings of artworks. She is also the founder of independent imprint 3-ply, which approaches artist-led publishing as an experimental site for the creation, dispersal and archiving of texts.
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Luke Rigby (Lukerr Design) moved into communication design having originally begun studies in architecture. Located in Naarm Melbourne his practice focuses on branding, art direction and experimental design, especially in the non-profit space. Rigby uses considered design as a tool of access, developing strategies and communications that foster inclusion.
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Yue Yang (YY from whyy atelier) is a designer based in Naarm Melbourne. Born in China, and raised in Beijing, Singapore, and Australia, her design practice integrates polylinguistic cultural contexts. YY’s practice and ethics are also influenced by her experiences in early childhood education, bringing experimental, playful, and intuitive methods into her print, web, and identity design commissions.