USEby is a cultural exchange project that links and explores artist-run spaces and initiatives throughout the Asia Pacific region. It offers artists, curators and writers the opportunity to exchange ideas and resources and to develop relationships and collaborations. USEby is specifically designed for use by artists and artist-driven organisations. While its aims are ongoing and far-reaching, USEby retains a sense of moderation, acknowledging the resourcefulness and energy of the small-scale, low-fi, DIY aesthetic that often characterises the artist-run endeavour.

Artist-run spaces proliferate throughout the Asia Pacific region, providing a vital and dynamic forum for artists, writers and curators to develop their practices. Each space is unique, drawing upon skills and talents of its artists and its social, political and economic environment. Models developed in one city may bare little resemblance to those adopted in others, but certain aspects remain constant. Together, these spaces reveal a sustained commitment to supporting, exhibiting and promoting emerging and dynamic practices and to nuturing a type of dialogue that falls outside both commercial and institutional set-ups.

In association with the Melbourne International Festival in October 2000, USEby presented an international exhibition held across two public art spaces in Melbourne: the Centre for Contemporary Photography and 200 Gertrude Street. Curated by Tessa Dwyer and Sarah Tutton, this exhibition addressed the unstable and transitory nature of contemporary art-making within peripheral zones, whether geographical or institutional. Emphasising the limited resources and life-spans of many small-scale collaborative projects, the USEby exhibition sought to consider such constraints in a positive light, embracing notions of ephemerality, disintegration and fragmentation.

The exhibition’s curators and the participating artists drew directly upon their experiences within a range of artist-run spaces and projects. This shared structural background was essential to the curatorial project, providing a point of productive commonality and dialogue. More than any single aesthetic or conceptual concern, USEby sought to reflect upon and engage with the practical realities that inform and mould the artist-run endeavour. USEby recognises the manner in which these very limitations often function as creative tools, producing their own dynamic and compelling aesthetic.

USEby is an initiative of the Centre for Contemporary Photography and 200 Gertrude Street, Melbourne, Australia.

Contacts:

Sarah Tutton & Tessa Dwyer
Curators and Project Coordinators
PO Box 2615
Fitzroy Business Centre
Fitzroy, Victoria
Australia 3065
Tel +61 3 9417 1549
Fax +61 3 9419 1605
Sarah Tutton: gillchristopher@hotmail.com
Tessa Dwyer: tessa@useby.net

DJ Huppatz
Forum Coordinator
PO Box 2615
Fitzroy Business Centre
Fitzroy, Victoria
Australia 3065
Tel +61 3 9417 1549
Fax +61 3 9419 1506
e-mail: danny@useby.net

www.useby.net