Fasten your seatbelts! Going Down Swinging welcomes you aboard Return Flight MEL>CHC: a multidisciplinary, trans-Tasman trip from Melbourne to Christchurch, and back again.
Curated by Elizaveta Maltseva, edited by Megan Anderson and designed by Jacqui Hagen, Return Flight features works and interviews by Drew Pettifer, TextaQueen, Sean M. Whelan and Selina Tusitala Marsh, which merge (or clash) Australia with Aotearoa, and ask whether the world really is as vast and disconnected as it feels.
For our second edition, Return Flight asked ten artists from Melbourne and New Zealand to create works that commented on the theme of ‘home’. We then paired each artwork with a writer from the opposite place and asked them to respond. Writers could engage with the artworks however they liked, but we didn’t let them off that easy: artists’ identities were withheld until the very end.
Afterwards, we sat our artists down for a Skype call with their assigned writers to discuss the collaborative process. You’ll find the transcripts of these conversations in the print edition of Return Flight: MEL>CHC, and you’ll see and hear them at our Melbourne and Christchurch launches.
Return Flight launches in Melbourne at BLINDSIDE on 12 July at 6 p.m., and at Exchange Christchurch on 10 August at 6 p.m.
Featuring art by Drew Pettifer, Jade Walsh, TextaQueen, Mike Eleven, Khi-Lee Thorpe, Inge Flinte, Cameron May, Pati Solomona Tyrell, Nancy Wilson and Miriama Grace-Smith.
Words by Jake Arthur, Hamish Clayton, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Tayi Tibble, Matariki Williams, Sean M. Whelan, Andy Jackson, Jeanine Leane, Didem Caia and Ellen van Neerven.
Fancy taking a trip to Edinburgh for $12? Grab a copy of last year’s Return Flight MEL>EDI here.
