Contested Spaces: an interdisciplinary collaboration

Abstract

ABSTRACT The world in 2020 presented Australia with a world on fire, in lock down, and in environmental ruin, with potentially unprecedented social dislocation, homelessness, unemployment and mental health issues. Four artists reaction was to collaborate in an attempt to make sense of the complex COVID-19 context that was unfolding in front of them. Their interdisciplinary collaboration resulted in the multimedia artwork: Contested Spaces. Two iterations of the artwork (2020 and 2021) were exhibited as the artists navigated the unfolding spaces inhabited as they learnt to live and cope under the strictures of COVID-19. The 2021 iteration, was part of a national arts and mental health focus consisting of exhibitions, talks and workshops at the National Art School in Sydney and ECU Galleries in Perth. Through Contested Spaces the artists explored the complexity of unique circumstances brought about by the pandemic. Working collaboratively across disciplinary boundaries, created a space in which alternate understandings manifested as a consequence of the situation. This paper argues that the ongoing narrative of COVID-19 needs to be examined and scrutinized, in reconsidering our constant perpetual present, one that contests ideas and art making processes, proffering interdisciplinarity methods as a productive means for critiquing everyday pandemic complexity.