Hello from Singapore! Before leaving for the Lion City (I’m conducting interviews for my upcoming reportage), I was spurred by a comment by artist Grace Siregar to look at gender gap in the arts in South East Asia. I talked about it with a few people and wrote a piece on the subject for ArtsHub.
Here’s the link to the article
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Time for a throwback. In February 2013 I left Italy for Australia. I lived in Melbourne for almost an year, and while I was there I started freelancing for English-speaking magazines – though I had already published a couple of pieces for Art Monthly Australia and others the previous year. There I developed a research on the local art system and artists in Melbourne – with a small side report from Perth.
When I came back to Italy, my idea was to make a book about emerging artists in Melbourne, with a similar concept to my Indonesia book. I wanted to give a synthetic but thorough introduction to a an art scene not well known abroad, this time making the book more narrative and focusing on the struggles of the emerging phase of an artist’s career. Because of other commitments – finalizing and publishing the Indonesian book, freelancing steadily for magazines, curating exhibitions, starting out as video-journalist and so on – I ended up working on it intermittently. That made it harder to pick up the book where I left and get back into the right mindset for writing again.
This summer 2015, after having struggled with a final draft of the book, I finally decided to put the project on hold indefinitely. Whether I’ll work on it or not in the future, a part of my research has been published on a number of Australian, Italian and international magazines. Even if the published material is just the tip of the iceberg, it can give you an idea of what I’ve looked at while in Australia – I find the interviews in particular a useful resource. In this long-winged post I’ll give you the coordinates of my reportage, plus the photostory of my research Down Under.
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Australian/Uk webmagazine ArtsHub has published my piece “Four ways arts workers can win in the new economy”. I have been interested in the sharing economy and the opportunities it provides to artists and art workers from a long time. By researching and writing this piece I got excited about the future – we tend to perceive our time as less revolutionary compared to the past decades, but actually there is so much going on, thanks to new technologies and the internet. In the piece I talk about three platforms that are contributing to reinventing the economy.
Here’s the link to the article
Here’s a pdf version of the piece
UK/Australian webmagazine ArtsHub has just published my new piece: “The slow truth behind overnight success”. For artists, the fairy tale of a big break is usually only half the story. Years of preparation is often behind an ‘overnight success’.
The reason why I enjoy writing for the Australian/British magazine ArtsHub so much , is because it gives me the possibility to delve deeper into the media industries I’m working into. So here’s my piece number eight for this great webmagazine. Here I explore how online sharing has created new rules of exchange for artists who must find ways of converting followers who like their work into paying customers.
Here’s the link to the article
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Article number five for the Times of Malta! Here I talk with Australian artists Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, who are researching the Maltese community in St Albans, a suburb of Melbourne, for their new video projects called “One from Mosta, Two from Zabbar”. Having always worked with sound in their art, the duo was interested both in the technical aspect and the social valence on Spirtu Pront.
“The singing is extremely skillful, in a loud and tightly strained voice, exemplifying Malta’s dual Arabic and European influences.” they explain “The ritual incorporates a cadenza where everyone respectfully renounces their insults and emphatically reconfirms the need for friendship.” In their video project the artists are interested in presenting this form of singing ritualised arguments as a positive social force and as a metaphor for the resolution of conflict in the public space.
Here’s the link to the article
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My interview with Australian artist Reko Rennie has just been published on the webmagazine Global Comment with the title “Aboriginal Royalty at the Venice Biennale: Interview with artist Reko Rennie”. This interview is part part of my research about artists in Melbourne.
Here’s the link to the article
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The Australian webmagazine RAVEN has just published my interview with Melbourne artist Sam Leach. I met Sam at Palazzo Bembo, in Venice, and we talked about the artist’s work in Personal Structures, a collateral exhibition to the Venice Biennale.
Here’s the link to the article
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The Australian webmagazine RAVEN has just published my interview with Melbourne artist Penny Byrne. I met Penny at Palazzo Franchetti, in Venice, and we talked about the artist’s work in Glasstress, an official Biennale satellite exhibition.
Here’s the link to the article
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Australian magazine Onya has just published my article on “No One Ever Leaves For Good: Australian Artists Making It Internationally”. In the piece I analyse the attitude and expectations of Australian artists and curators when it comes to exhibit overseas or move abroad. This article is part of my reportage/research on emerging artists in Melbourne.
Here’s the link to the article
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Uk/Aussie webmagazine ArtsHub has just published my article “Australia’s biggest year at Venice” about the Australian presence at the Venice Biennale 2015 – which is unprecedented in terms of numbers and critical success. It was great to see these talented artists exhibit in the one of the world’s most prestigious events and have a chat with them over coffee… or ice cream.
Here’s the link to the article
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Naima Morelli is an arts writer and journalist specialized in contemporary art from Asia-Pacific and the MENA region.
She has written for the Financial Times, Al-Jazeera, The Art Newspaper, ArtAsiaPacific, Internazionale and Il Manifesto, among others, and she is a regular contributor to Plural Art Mag, Middle East Monitor and Middle East Eye as well as writing curatorial texts for galleries.
She is the author of three books on Southeast Asian contemporary art.
Reach out: contact [at] naimamorelli.com
Published! Graphic Journalism and Migration on Global Comment
My piece “How A New Generation of Graphic Novels Are Portraying Migration” has just been published on the webmagazine Global Comment. For this piece I spoke with graphic journalist Gianluca Costantini, comic book artist and illustrator Matt Huynh and SBS producer Kylie Boltin.
Here’s the link to the article
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