Arie Rain Glorie
Season 1 – Episode 8
Resources
Instagram handle @Arie_rain_glorie
arierainglorie.com
dramaturgyxcuration.com
testing-grounds.com.au
Article: Well-Merged: Emerging Artists at the End of their Era – Alexie Glass-Kantor & Emily Cormack artmonthly.org.au/issue-257-march-2013
Transcript
Kiera Brew Kurec 0:11
Hi, I’m Kiera Brew Kurec
Nick Breedon 0:12
I’m Nick Breedon,
Kiera Brew Kurec 0:13
and you’re listening to Pro Prac a podcast where we explore the professional practice of artists and here their stories.
Nick Breedon 0:21
Welcome to Pro Prac. Today in the studio we have Arie Rain Glorie. Arie is a visual artist and curator based in Melbourne. He has exhibited locally and interstate including the Gertrude street projection festival, This is not art festival, Channels video art biennial, White night Melbourne, Melbourne Fringe Festival, Melbourne Now, Kings ARI, George Paton gallery, Melbourne central at MARS gallery, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art West Space, The Substation Melbourne Town Hall, Craft Victoria, Margaret Lawrence gallery, Kingston Art Centre and Lights in winter festival. In addition, he has also been a commissioned artist with Signal screen commission, Four by Four mini projection festival and Uncommon Places Melbourne Fringe festivals 2014 keynote project at Melbourne city and Docklands libraries. As a curator he has worked with a wide variety of local, national and international emerging and mid-career artists. His curation projects include but not limited to Digital Outlawed in 2013 and the Love City curatorial trilogy, three artists run festivals over three years in 2014, 2015 and 2016. And then New Vanguard exhibition at Seventh gallery at the Gertrude street projection festival co curated with Yandell Walton, the experimental a time based exhibition and carousel, presenting over 20 artworks on stage revolving one by one to a seated audience. He also sat on the selection panel selecting future students for RMIT BFA, and he was a participating visual arts judge for Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2015. In 2016, he was the Gertrude street projection festival assistant curator and he is the program director and curator of Testing Grounds in the Melbourne arts precinct and curator at the Centre for Dramaturgy and Curation. Thanks so much for joining us in the studio today Arie.
Arie Rain Glorie 2:14
Thank you.
Nick Breedon 2:16
So Arie, can you tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are today?
Arie Rain Glorie 2:21
So I guess I was born in a country town called Denmark, which is very south in W.A I think it’s possibly the my south point you can go a small surf town surrounded by karri trees. I have two sisters. And we were I was born in a mud brick house that my parents built out in the bush there at the time, my Mum was doing community service work, and also working for circuses, and putting on a lot of kind of community art and community engagement projects. So I’ve started to I think, in the last couple of years realize that I was essentially born into the arts. Not in like way that I could have been born in to a loft in New York. But I guess I had a very creative family. Always. My Dad was a surfer as well. He’s a carpenter. I was always around kind of community events. And these art events as well. Both of my sisters were creative. They are creative a fashion designer, a Chef, graphic designer at one point, we’re all very encouraged to pursue liberal arts. Then I was in a circus when I was little. I was chuckles the clown (laughter). Yeah. Oh, yeah. And we actually spent a couple of seasons touring in a circus around the southwest of W.A doing shows, I think my Mum was like the stage manager, or registrar of that circus. And really what that was, essentially it was a bunch of hippie families that made their kids perform. But did well enough, I guess, to kind of tour around. We did it with Fatt Matt Luna circus, which people in the circus industry in Australia will probably recognize that name. And then went through primary school. When I was about 11. My sister had a really, really bad car accident one of those kind of catastrophic ones that tear everybody’s lives apart. She’s alive and well now.
Kiera Brew Kurec 4:39
Older sister?
Arie Rain Glorie 4:40
eldest sister, yeah. I’m the youngest in the family. And that forced us to move to the city, which was really perfect timing for me. Because it happened when I was 12. Possibly we could have ended up doing that anyway. But you know, that was really why we had to relocate for to use hospital and rehabilitation services, but it was perfect for me. Because I was expressing a lot of interest in acting at the time. And ended up auditioning for an art school in Perth got into that, we all very quickly I think gravitated towards the city and all started working out our lives pretty quickly. So we stayed there. Sold the mud brick house, and lived in Fremantle, a port city in Perth. And then yeah, I pursued that. It was kind of like a scholarship program thing that you had to audition to get into. And did that into 15? I don’t know why I’m asking you don’t know. 15. And then at that stage, I really, really dramatically lost interest in it.
Kiera Brew Kurec 5:48
So was it one of those kind of intensive schooling like theatre schooling for children, like you see in films?
Arie Rain Glorie 5:55
yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were in the kind of drama thing they also did ballet, they also did musical theatre, and music program. And the program, they didn’t have that with specialists was visual. But they did have an art department that we really enjoyed hanging out in. I think, actually, that’s what happened among being turning into a little bit of a monster of a 16 year old, wagging school an incredible amount. And doing other lots of really naughty things. Lots of illegal things. I yeah, I started hanging out in the art room. And I think with the theatre world, even at that age, I got disillusioned. My Mum also worked in theatres. So I’d been around that when I was little I think at this age, you know, this is when you’re 16, people start really putting that pressure on what you’re gonna do? are you gonna go to university? and all of that and I started to go, I know what life in the arts looks like. And it’s not something that I really want. I was very cynical at that age. Even though I had a lot of people championing me, you know, a lot of people saying you can definitely do this, a supportive family, you know, it’s rare to have a family that say, you know, until I kind of started to prove that I could make a life in the visual arts, my Mum would still be like, I really think you should go back to acting. (laughter)
Nick Breedon 7:22
Wow. Yeah, that it’s like parents give that story. It doesn’t matter what the original thing was, like, I really think maybe you should pursue ….
Arie Rain Glorie 7:40
Yeah, and then I so Yeah, I guess I got into that. I don’t know, that just started resonating. To be honest, probably cuz I was smoking heaps of pot. And you can sit there and draw. Yeah, and then I left and my idea of not pursuing the arts, you know, I had a gap year I moved out of home when I was 17. I was pretty keen to get out of there. My parents brought me and my siblings, my siblings and I up to be pretty independent. And I think that backfired on them because we all left home really early. Yeah, left and then my idea of not pursuing the arts, which, you know, was not a very fool proof plan was I went and studied philosophy for about a year and a half at Notre Dom University I only went to that university because it was on the beach and really close to my house. Did that for a while realized that that was not something that I wanted to do. Actually, what happened when I was that time that I kind of got disillusioned with theatre and started wagging school a lot and and I guess partying a lot and probably, you know, now when I look back on it, struggling with my sexuality and acting out and all these bizarre ways was that I got King hit by a crackhead. At this party, I won’t really go into it, but what happened when I was 19 Is I got a criminal compensation pay-out. So I was 19. I was at Uni getting disillusioned with that all this money lands in my account. So I went to South America. And then from there, I came to Melbourne. What happened is I realized that I could leave Fremantle and as soon as I realized that I knew halfway through my travels in South America that I wasn’t returning. I went home for a week, packed my suitcase and moved to Melbourne. I would have been 20 then 10 years later, still here. More?
Nick Breedon 9:44
Yes please that’s amazing so far.
Kiera Brew Kurec 9:48
So once you arrived in Melbourne, did you have any kind of network of peers or anything that you had moved over here before you or were you really starting fresh?
Arie Rain Glorie 9:57
I knew one or two people I actually knew someone that had gone to the arts high school that I went to that was here. And they had actually had gone to Europe to dance in a show and I took her room for a month. And I guess straightaway because of that I moved into a share house full of other artists. So that was kind of lucky or fortuitous. And then, but I remember I’ve floated around for a year or two, I mean, still young and not quite sure what to do just honestly just trying to survive and eat and pay the rent getting lots of really terrible jobs and never worked in hospitality. So I really struggled when I got to Melbourne, I started working at 14 but I just avoided hospitality the whole time, video shops mainly.
Nick Breedon 10:42
oh, yes, I was gonna say it’s kind of a blessing and a curse in a way.
Arie Rain Glorie 10:45
Yeah totally.
Kiera Brew Kurec 10:47
Video shops were such a point of employment for so many people, and they don’t exist anymore.
Nick Breedon 10:51
Yeah young people always working at Video Ezy
Arie Rain Glorie 10:55
And I worked at this amazing one that was in an old Citadel that was still half VHS. where the universities in Perth would hire from because they just had really rare stuff and the most awesome bosses in the world and they really gave me like a cinema education and piles of classic movies.
Nick Breedon 11:12
Was that homework?
Arie Rain Glorie 11:14
Yeah, and I think it really rubbed off on me having a video art practice and had quite a bit of back catalogue in my mind of things to draw from.
Kiera Brew Kurec 11:24
Yeah So when you moved to Melbourne, did you have to step into hospitality roles? Or did you kind of keep avoiding them?
Arie Rain Glorie 11:34
A lot of really dumb like two shifts and then disappear of the face of the earth unless they owed me money still. I was not good at it. Like Melbourne has a much higher standard hospitality. I couldn’t even get like people be like, Oh, yeah, I don’t know how to make a coffee. Like I’d been on it. You know? I could but no, yeah. They would taste or not just look at the coffee.
Nick Breedon 12:00
It was coffee. (laughter)
Arie Rain Glorie 12:02
in Perth, there’s no difference between coffees. You just get a cappuccino no matter what. Yeah, no. Yeah. big struggle. But then I found a video shop here.
Nick Breedon 12:19
does it exist anymore?
Arie Rain Glorie 12:20
No, it was in North Melbourne. Yeah, across the road from the market. So I think there’s a bike shop now.
Kiera Brew Kurec 12:26
Was there the point then that you decided to go and study art? Oh, are you doing something else in the meantime?
Arie Rain Glorie 12:33
yeah, I guess I definitely moved to Melbourne with the idea that, I knew that someone had told me, I’d never been to Melbourne before. Someone had told me that Melbourne was the place to go to for art. And I remember even when I was studying philosophy, I would like started to look up Melbourne. I think someone told me about VCA and I started looking it up online. And so I had this very kind of like, I guess romantic idea about moving to the art capital of Australia. Yeah, and and then I didn’t know what to do. So but I was making a lot of work in my bedroom. And yeah, I guess drawing a lot painting a lot I used to cartoon a lot. I do cartoon a lot now. I’ve kind of come full circle. And yeah, so much that I used to do the whole selling art on Swanston Street. I got I got a busking license and would just sit there and draw. I would tell people that I needed money for uni books, because then they would give me more money.
Nick Breedon 13:37
scam! (laughter)
Arie Rain Glorie 13:39
And Avril McQueen from City of Melbourne I remember came and gave me her card and started telling me about grants. And that was the first time that the grant world got put on my radar.
Unknown Speaker 13:48
That’s amazing. Shout out Avril!
Arie Rain Glorie 13:55
She is amazing.
Nick Breedon 13:56
I know that is amazing.
Arie Rain Glorie 13:59
Yeah, and I think then obviously I looked at it and you know, freaked out and I have no idea how to do this. It seemed so simple at the time like you can just apply for money?
Nick Breedon 14:11
They just give it to you? why would they just give it to you? (Laughter)
Arie Rain Glorie 14:16
Yeah. And then I went to a design school, Australian Academy of Design. I applied for VCA and RMIT for fine art didn’t get into either of them and went to this design school it was a private college. They accepted me that a visual art course. Did that for a year. Really liked it, but craved a more competitive
Nick Breedon 14:41
like peer group?
Arie Rain Glorie 14:42
Yeah, I didn’t find it challenging enough. I learned a lot I had an amazing lecturer there. Michelle ……. is a legend. But yeah, really just wanted a lot more. I want something bigger and I wanted to be in the middle of the city. So I went to RMIT. They made me start again. But then I think, you know, built up enough of a portfolio of skills for them to then accept me into the course.
Kiera Brew Kurec 15:08
And what was the course that you studied at? RMIT?
Arie Rain Glorie 15:11
bachelor of fine art.
Kiera Brew Kurec 15:12
Yeah, and what area were you majoring in?
Arie Rain Glorie 15:14
We were the guinea pig year where they had gotten rid of departments. It’s just called expanded studio practice. Yeah, which actually really suited the type of art that I make master at nothing type stuff. I think I would have really struggled with you know, focusing on one type of medium. I got in with painting and drawing and then didn’t basically didn’t pick up a paintbrush or a pen for the next four years.
Nick Breedon 15:42
Classic
Arie Rain Glorie 15:42
Yep classic move, I had a boyfriend at the time that was a practicing artists. You know, pretty in the Melbourne art scene, he introduced me to a lot of that, as much as they don’t want to give him the credit for that. But yeah, that kind of really thrust me into the kind of performance art, more conceptual world. You know, because I think I remember saying, I think even to my Mum on the phone of like, I’m in this city, I want to find the art, but I don’t know how to find it. And even at that age, not being in the art world, are you like, are you just allowed to rock up to an opening?
Kiera Brew Kurec 15:42
Yeah is it open to the public and how public is that?
Nick Breedon 16:24
And like, how did you even find out about them. I feel like it was it was so yeah, it’s kind of secret. It was a secret society, you know, knowing when they were on.
Kiera Brew Kurec 16:34
Definitely pre Instagram, Facebook events, pre even everyone having a website, not everyone needs to had a website and that space might not. Or it might just be some contact details to find out when the openings were on you kind of relied on picking up invites from the door ways of spaces.
Arie Rain Glorie 16:52
yeah, absolutely. And the artists run the scene, especially. So hidden down, like I mean, everyone’s like, yeah, Melbourne laneway culture, but it’s actually it makes it really hard to locate things (laughter). And and, you know, that adds a layer of pretentiousness that now I hate, which is like, if you’re not, you know, you’re not in it. If you don’t know about it, you’re just like to un cool therefor we don’t care if you are at our opening or not. That’s bullshit. Although now I work in a really hidden place.(laughter)
Kiera Brew Kurec 17:21
It is also very accessible at the same time.
Nick Breedon 17:25
It does have a kind of a level of accessibility that a lot of those other spaces really don’t have in terms of like, you know, physical accessibility.
Arie Rain Glorie 17:34
Well, and I think that’s interesting. Like, that’s not necessarily their fault. It’s infrastructure means that you are literally hidden up a staircase up a laneway. But then what infrastructure does in rubbing off on people’s attitude, you know, the way that a street press spins that into being a cool thing, and then everyone goes, Oh, this is cool. We shouldn’t like fix it. We all perpetuate each other’s, it’s nobody’s fault. Yeah, we’re all in it together.
Nick Breedon 18:01
Yes. And we’re all getting kicked out of these spaces by like, yuppies now anyway, so yeah, not for us. (laughter)
Kiera Brew Kurec 18:12
So working through while you’re studying, did start exhibiting while you still studying, or did you wait until after you graduated to kind of launch into that?
Arie Rain Glorie 18:24
No, I started pretty much straightaway. Yeah, I was keen as I think what I worked out a few things happened I was quite confident as a student don’t know why just a confident person worked out that it’s okay to make mistakes and so called fail in front of people. nobody really cares. Unless you do something highly offensive. When I went to South America when I was 19. I met all these like English people would end up ended up making friends with them. People that I’m still friends with to this day, they all ended up moving to Melbourne as well. Through them I met someone we all know Lauren Dunn and went to a music festival with her met Yandell Walton. Lauren rang me up one day and said my superstar girlfriend is looking for an intern. I think that you could be a great person I said yes. So even a first year uni I had someone like Yandell to learn off. She was helping me out a lot and give me a lot of incredibly useful advice. I was very lucky. I always my whole life have up until this point I’ve always felt like I’ve been really lucky that I’ve had people who have been championing me and carrying me. Yeah, so really fortunate to always have people to call on. Yandell used to get me to do her tax.(Laughter) Yeah get two glasses of wine into me I know we will still talk about it.
Kiera Brew Kurec 20:00
She was in earlier today recording and did not mention any of that in terms of resources!
Nick Breedon 20:06
Interns Yandell don’t forget to shout out your interns.
Arie Rain Glorie 20:11
But you know, I didn’t know anything about artist tax at the end of the day I learned quite a lot from that.
Kiera Brew Kurec 20:16
Yeah, I didn’t really know anything about tax until I remember when I graduated. It was my big thing to get my ABN like as I was finishing art school, but I still had no idea about tax and I just kept things in a shoebox. And I would go to my Mum’s accountant who would come to her house and he would be like, you know, this is the last time I am going to do it. (Laughter)
Arie Rain Glorie 20:43
You know, being in her warehouses. And just being around people she would often curate me into things. And then I was living in North Melbourne as well. I’ve had like eight share houses in eight years, I think, never a bad experience, just like, sometimes I would stay for a good two or three years. Other times, I’d move every three months. never had any possession. So it was really easy to just walk off. And I lived with some artists there as well one artists Tamika Carter, T.R Carter, who had ran in a great gallery called Art Beat that used to be in North Melbourne. It was a really cool artist run initiative and had run some in Sydney as well. So she gave me a lot of advice as well. The guy did something insane, like 10 exhibitions every year for the first three is about school. Yeah. Just Yeah. worked out how to write write a tidy 200 word proposal. And just went for it.
Nick Breedon 21:40
Smashed it out.
Arie Rain Glorie 21:41
Yeah, performance arts really helps. Because you don’t have to like to build an entire installation. You just like jump in the room. And, you know, I used to do a lot of kind of endurance push my body stuff. So it’s okay If it kind of like there’s no failure in that.
Kiera Brew Kurec 21:41
Yeah. Because whatever the outcome is, is the work.
Arie Rain Glorie 21:58
Yeah. Loved it.
Nick Breedon 22:00
So how did you sort of get your kind of break into more of the curation side of things?
Arie Rain Glorie 22:09
Yeah. So I guess through exhibiting a lot through through all these pretty much all around initiatives, maybe. And then some festivals, is I started to become really interested in creating my own experiences, opportunities, rather. And yeah, the first exhibition I created was, I can’t remember what year it was, but it’s called Digital Outlawed. And I challenged a bunch of people to make art without using any digital media. And then I the main one, though, is I did a I got a warehouse in Chinatown. That’s now called Belville the bar that was empty, actually, I think Yandell knew about it and she told me about it. And I went in there and was like, awesome. I was really into bricks at the time. And I really want to make a big exhibition about bricks. And basically got this warehouse space for a solo show, and then realized it was way too big. It was I think it was like 500 square meters or something. Yeah, really big. So then decided that I needed to curate a show instead to fill it. I think I can read myself into my first show. But then from that, I made a pretty strict decision that I still hold up today that I don’t curate myself into shows that when I curate, I really need to give all my time and resources into the people that are running around for me,
Nick Breedon 23:39
It is like the ultimate form of nepotism curating yourself into something,
Arie Rain Glorie 23:44
yeah, some people still do it. And I think it’s fine, like each to their own I don’t judge them for but for myself. Yeah, I find that really important. Also, I found out trying to make your own work while dealing with everyone else means that you give your work like something’s gonna, something’s gonna go wrong. So I curated this night called Love City, and I call it a festival because it ended up being 25 artists, and more than just an exhibition opening in the sense that I became really interested in performance. I’ve always really loved whacking performance together with kind of strictly visual art, I guess. And I’ve often worked with performance makers who come from a theatre background, as well as a performance art background. From a young age I wanted to break down those boundaries between the disciplines I liked that. I guess that’s because I did study theatre, and I’ve always been in that world as well, socially. Or maybe I have access to it. So I feel like it’s an easy thing to do.
Nick Breedon 24:47
And just kind of understand that kind of language as well.
Arie Rain Glorie 24:50
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, that turned into three festivals one night only festivals did two a Testing Grounds. And then Joseph and Millie, These Are The Projects We Do Together who operate testing grounds, offered me a job.
Nick Breedon 25:08
Here you are! Was there a kind of process of kind of stepping into that role as an arts worker that was, you know, challenging at all for you that was like, you know, did you feel like that compromised your kind of artistic integrity or like your, your position as an artist, you know, like, I think artists like to think of them so much as being like this kind of pure entity of being an artist. And some sometimes other jobs feel like they can kind of be encroaching on that space. Did you feel anything like that at all?
Arie Rain Glorie 25:39
Not at all I think through all the other independent things I had curated and worked on the projection festival by this stage, things like that, I think I was already this assistant festival curator, I’d already demonstrated an aptitude for admin (Laughter). And was really desperately trying to get out of working in bottle shops at that stage. So it was kind of putting it out there. I actually the year that I got off of the job at testing grounds. I remember saying to Mark my boyfriend, that I was like, I could do that job. I want to do that job. Put it out there in the universe. I guess not that I really said it to many people. But I was certainly looking around for arts admin work. Yeah. Luckily, I got a break because it can be hard to break into.
Kiera Brew Kurec 26:32
Absolutely.
Arie Rain Glorie 26:33
Especially because all I had was a bachelor degree in fine art.
Kiera Brew Kurec 26:37
Yeah and it’s not a masters or arts administration
Nick Breedon 26:39
Yeah, you’re competing against a whole nother like, yeah You know, that’s going from there into arts work.
Arie Rain Glorie 26:42
Yeah. But I think that’s a really interesting question. Because people asked me that a lot when it was happening. They felt like I was compromising. Where I’ve never seen it that way. I’ve seen my arts practice as something that can hold a lot of different things. And I really enjoy admin, work God. (Laughter) to the point that I recognize that art making involves a lot of admin. So everything we do at Testing Grounds, even though it can be slogging out, a lot of admin, is making art. It is the end the art is the endpoint at all time. I don’t care how I get there.
Kiera Brew Kurec 27:32
Have you found that while you are working in a position where you are facilitating arts projects constantly on a daily basis, while also working on kind of within that space, also, like longer term projects that outside of where you work to then be curating other shows. Has that been challenging at all? Because you’re already doing that as a daily practice in your employment, to then take that outside and work with other artists Does that become a time compromise? Or has it ever been hard to continue the curation side of your practice outside of your job ?
Arie Rain Glorie 28:11
Yeah. last year, I did three major things, projects outside of running Testing Grounds. And I gotta say, I was pretty exhausted in December, like, like, really quite exhausted. To the point where I’m actually gonna, I’m actually seeing a psychologist now to help get some tools under my belt to cope. Yeah, it’s, you know what, but what Testing Grounds has done is just made me relax an incredible amount. I think my curation style used to be really heavy handed for my independent projects which is a both has pros and cons. You know, I think I really tried to control the projects that I curated, where now I don’t consider that as a part of my philosophy much more at all. Now, I really kind of just, I mean, you just through doing, you know, overseeing 130 projects a year. You just you just learn to relax. You just you just feel like your sense of what could go wrong. You know, when you’re when you’re doing your first couple of shows, you’re like, oh my god that didactics didn’t print right, I was just the worst thing in the world. The show can open. You know where now it’d be like I forgot to put the didactics up I guess. but I think and this is controversial, and I’ve had arguments with friends about this. I don’t put artists first anymore. I put audiences first. And I think I you know if I look around at the event or the project that I’m curating going well, is the audience having a really good time? I mean, not to say that artists aren’t important the integrity of their work is incredibly important. But, you know, I think when it comes to those exhibition touches, It’s just like, you have to ask the question, does anyone notice? before you freak out.
Kiera Brew Kurec 30:21
Do you think that’s also because of literally your position where you sit in office overseeing people walking through a space every day? And through different periods of the day and different periods of the year and watching how people engage with work. Do you think that had informed this approach?
Arie Rain Glorie 30:39
really eye opening, and I think under the influence of These Are The Projects We Do Together who are an architecture and design practice, and wayfinding, those types of things, because, you know, a lot of exhibition curating is just wayfinding. They have a really interesting philosophy and attitude that’s definitely rubbed off on me. And we’ve started, we’ve developed together for Testing Grounds in particular, where, you know, it’s really interesting when you come from not a visual arts perspective and say, well, what matters and what doesn’t? I’m a big fan of the unlearned.
Kiera Brew Kurec 31:13
Yeah.
Arie Rain Glorie 31:13
I think that, you know, a formal arts education is great. You learned a lot of things. But I spent a year after art school kind of deprogramming myself and saying, I don’t, you know, I need to take what I think is important out of that, what they’ve taught me because they’re not right about everything. And especially when you’re talking about new modes of curation and art making. They’re really going for a traditional, this is how you get into commercial galleries or museums style. And there is an entire world of art, and schools of thought and community outside of that school of thought.
Kiera Brew Kurec 31:50
And, you know, audiences who don’t have visual arts background.
Arie Rain Glorie 31:54
Yeah they don’t care, they don’t care about anything. They just want to be entertained. Yeah. You know, and hopefully, through that entertainment, we can challenge them. But you don’t challenge them first.
Kiera Brew Kurec 32:09
Well, it’s also not very inviting, and also not inclusive of a conversation. If you are literally putting up a wall before people can even have that, you know, see the work.
Nick Breedon 32:19
Oh, yeah, I guess it’s who you making work for? And like, you know, if you need to do like a, you know, three or four year degree to understand what the work is about, then maybe that’s, you know, yeah, it’s very exclusionary.
Arie Rain Glorie 32:36
Yeah. But you know, there are totally other examples like, you’re right, like knowing who you’re making it for. And sometimes you do make projects for the contemporary art crowd, then you do need to make sure that you’ve got crisp, white didactics up. Because they will roast you.
Kiera Brew Kurec 32:53
It sounds like it’s been such a, like a busy lineage of showing and working in spaces. What, and you’ve obviously witnessed a lot of different people’s practices as well. So for you, maybe personally or from observation, what does a successful practice mean to you?
Arie Rain Glorie 33:13
Oh good question. Hmmmmm. Well, how are we defining practice?
Kiera Brew Kurec 33:25
It could be anything, anything.
Arie Rain Glorie 33:26
Okay. So I got a few tired answers.
Nick Breedon 33:30
lay it out.
Arie Rain Glorie 33:31
I mean, I would start with I would ditch the word practice and say what is success successful artists look like? And that is just somebody who does it for enjoyment and includes it in their kind of everyday life and the way they think and the way they approach the world. I think that’s, you know, especially when we talk about queer politics in the realm of art, you know, it’s exactly the same thing. It’s just the way you approach the world and realize that if you approach with everything with creativity, you can I feel like, I do get more out of life. I think (Laughter) I don’t know how else to operate.
Nick Breedon 34:07
Have you tested this theory (Laughter) No that is a fantastic answer I think.
Arie Rain Glorie 34:17
Having a professional practice, what that is successful, I don’t you know, I mean, what the most common kind of defensive thing you hear people say, especially when they say, they say, what do you do? And you say, I’m an artist and curator and they go, Oh, and what else do you do? And you go, Oh, that’s it. And then they go, Ah, so you’ve like, quote, made it unquote. And you’re like, Well, I mean, I just have a job. You know, people think and then they straightaway get into this defensive thing of like, Ah, you know, I’m embarrassed because I’m make art but I also work here and, like, you don’t need to be embarrassed about that everybody does their own thing is no one way and it doesn’t mean success for working full time in the arts. It’s, you know, I used to say, when I worked in bottle shops at that time in my life, I really liked that, that I could go to work and leave everything behind for six hours and just do something really simple and not in the art world because I was finding the art world at that stage of my life a lot to navigate. So that respite it was actually perfect. Yeah, and I think the biggest thing is nobody, these days that I know of anyway, unless you’re like, well, you’re probably not living in Melbourne anymore. No one is a full time artist. Everybody has to do other things. And what’s this like idea of If you’re not You know, it’s like I said before, like, I didn’t struggle with becoming an arts worker, because I felt it so it kind of integrated into my arts practice already anyway that like if you have to have another job on the side, or many jobs on the side or many hustles, that is all part of your practice all at once, even the most famous artist in the world will do lectures on the side would teach classes. Because probably sitting in a studio every day is really boring. Yeah, you gotta get out there and keep engaging. So you keep having things to make work about. Because who hates a self-reflecting artist who has nothing to say, but comment on their own practice. (Laughter) Yeah, go out there, like, leave the studio get some life experience.
Kiera Brew Kurec 36:31
So true in terms of the studying, like, for me, I went straight from high school into VCA. And always knew that I wanted to do honours, but I kind of got to the end of third year and was like, I’m just making the most self-referential art. And because all I know is my own, like, obviously, all you’ll ever know is your own experience. But I was I was really young, I was really naive. And I was just making work about what was immediate to me. And I really had to, I only took a little bit of time off. But even that was enough to kind of come back in. And then I took time off again, before going back to masters. Especially I think when you’re working with your body, as a medium as well, you’re in the works often, or you’re using other people that might stand in as a proxy for you. And so it can be really hard to kind of define where you stop and where your practice begins and getting a bit of time and context outside to like, draw inspiration from and understand yourself just living in the world. I think is really important.
Arie Rain Glorie 37:36
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. 100%. The third tier is from my perspective as an arts worker. Because I assess applications all the time I look for where are they at or what level of practice are they at, you know, we don’t like the word emerging. But we do have to think about and we do have to discuss it. In all its kind of definitions.
Kiera Brew Kurec 37:56
Can we pop back onto that after you finish this, about the word emerging.
Arie Rain Glorie 38:00
Yeah.
A successful practicing artists looks like somebody who knows how to boil down an idea or under 200 words. They know how to submit good support material that’s relevant and is an actual diagram the amount of time you just get like wishy washy images, and you just have no idea what this is. They have just uploaded something because it’s a mandatory field on the form. And who can do a budget, and these are not easy things to learn. You know, for a lot of first time artists or emerging artists in the first five years of practice, I wouldn’t actually expect them to be able to hit all three of those on the head.
Kiera Brew Kurec 38:45
The word emerging, Nick, and I’ve been discussing with people who we have been interviewing and also like outside of that, in terms of just thinking about where we are and our own practices and like state of career and when do you stop being an emerging artist? Is it? Can you identify yourself? Or do you have to like, subscribe to what an institution defines as emerging or not emerging?
Nick Breedon 39:14
What could that look like? What could a definition like if there is a hard definition What could it look like? Because five years doesn’t really, I feel like that doesn’t really cut it anymore. Especially Yeah, just the kind of environment that we’re all going. I feel like late emerging is a quite interesting term.
Kiera Brew Kurec 39:31
But is there other words that we could possibly start using to identify artists at different stages of their career that isn’t emerging and mid-career or late career or like, or successful or whatever.
Arie Rain Glorie 39:43
I feel like recently I’ve discovered something right. At Testing Grounds we actively say on the website, we do not support the emerging. Australia Council for the Arts uses it a five years. It kind of trickles down from there. I feel that the definition across the sector, we don’t use it based on Emily McCormack and Alexi Glass-Kantor wrote an essay that says emerging is a term that came about in the 80s is like defunct now because the artists that always desires to break new ground was be considered emerging. I.e. Contemporary.
Kiera Brew Kurec 40:22
Do you know where that article was published?
Arie Rain Glorie 40:25
It was published I think at Gertrude contemporary.
Kiera Brew Kurec 40:27
cool. We’ll try and find that and link it in whatever source that we have available. So great, so that we can share that because that sounds Yes,
Arie Rain Glorie 40:36
yeah. Yeah. It’s great. It’s a great little short article. Yeah. I don’t know how long ago they wrote it. And then so we’ve never used it. Now, what happens is an artworker and trying to work out who utilizes your space Is you come across a data problem?
Nick Breedon 40:54
Yes,
Arie Rain Glorie 40:54
without asking this, we are not able to properly assess who’s using our space, and whether they are kind of emerging or whether they’re not. And that’s essentially why we use the term. So you get into a really tricky area there and not having that data is also a really is a problematic thing. Because you need to check, you know, it’s we can go out there guns blazing saying we’re doing all these great things for the arts community for the emerging arts community in particular. But we have no kind of way to check that in pure numbers. And then, of course, pure numbers, and data is very useful for government support. Yeah, you know, we are getting in to like, a wider ecology in these. things. Yeah, so I feel like, you know, emerging is a hard word, especially for me, I’m not five years after university, I think up two, three must be three. You know, but then I often feel like I’m not eligible to take emerging because of my status as a as a curator and program director. And how do you separate those two things? It also works that other way where it’s, yeah,
Kiera Brew Kurec 42:02
yeah. I think hopefully, some other kind of terminology or way of collecting that data, or, you know, measuring things in a non just linear way could emerge.
Arie Rain Glorie 42:15
Yeah, I feel like it is fashion as well. Experimental has really come back into vocabulary. Everything’s experimental art . And I feel like he used to hear the word emerging a lot more five years ago. Now it’s, you know, everyone’s kind of gone. emerging, not a great term.
Kiera Brew Kurec 42:32
I didn’t know if that was actually like, just me reflecting where I am in my career and that term kind of being phased out, or whether it was, I was just not paying as much attention to it, because it was no longer applicable in those years from university. And where do you take that from like, when you finished your master’s degree, or when you finished undergrad, like, at what it’s so hard to find that measurable timeframe, as well as, and different institutions will use different timeframe or if you’re collected by, you know, certain institutions, or if you are represented or unrepresented? And I think as well, for some artists as well, different stages of their practice might be established and other parts of their practice is emerging.
Arie Rain Glorie 43:19
Totally Yeah
Kiera Brew Kurec 43:19
So it’s, yeah, it’s interesting to think about that artists have a multifaceted practice that all have different public outcomes or public interfaces, in terms of their showing or producing. That could be at different stages.
Arie Rain Glorie 43:34
Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with that. Yeah, I think we’re always kind of leapfrogging as artists. Yeah. And then, and then replacing the word emerging with experimental experimental has just as many problems you know, I always say, you know, a lot a lot of the time we look for interdisciplinary kind of examples as experimentation. But really, you know, if you’re if you’re a painter and you experiment with pushing paint around a canvas you’re experimenting with that so you know, we’re making judgment calls and going Yes, not experimental that is just painting.
Kiera Brew Kurec 44:08
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there is a whole nother set of issues that arrive with that. And so can you give us a bit of a breakdown of what a day in your life, practice look like? Or a month or a week? A year?
Arie Rain Glorie 44:32
I will do like mega day.
Nick Breedon 44:34
Yeah, that’s great
Arie Rain Glorie 44:35
Which happen once or twice a month. Friday morning. I wake up, I go to the gym. I go to the gym every morning. No. (Laughter) I really wish I could say that.
Nick Breedon 44:48
You nearly almost had me there I was like so impressed.
Arie Rain Glorie 44:52
But I actually started doing the last year because I actually will if I haven’t mega day now because I do find it gives me a lot more energy I can work until 10.30 so I need to look after myself. So yeah, I would probably go to the gym, because that’s gonna give me more energy, then I go to eat breakfast at work and never eat breakfast at home because I just can’t deal with it. Have a coffee
Kiera Brew Kurec 45:14
What do you have for breakfast?
Arie Rain Glorie 45:16
At the moment muesli. But it’s just because it’s after New Year, it’s a new me! I will be chowing down croissants in a month (Laughter) coffee and a cigarette by June.
Kiera Brew Kurec 45:34
Bottle of wine in December
Arie Rain Glorie 45:35
That’s right just not eating at all. Yeah. Yeah, breakfast at work. Yeah, just need that time. My partner and I, if I didn’t go to the gym, then my partner who works in the arts precinct too we like to go to work together and discuss our day’s day on the way in on the tram, then we will have a coffee at work, then run around, open all the exhibitions and shows get the site in order, then that’s by about 10am 10am have a staff meeting. And then generally, the rest of the day is having meetings. Sometimes I could have back to back meetings, like literally about six meetings a day, It is really, really bad thing to do, it exhausts me and I lose my voice. But what I like to do is set my meetings half an hour apart as a means of meetings only allowed to go for 25 minutes, they need to say what they say and then they need to leave. And having the next person arrived for that meeting is a really good way to end that meeting. And honestly half an hour is enough to say, to work out what we need to work out. If a longer meeting calls for it then that’s great we’ll schedule that another time. I think that’s something that I’ve become quite good at in the last year knowing when to end a meeting and knowing when to excuse yourself from a meeting. Because you become very time poor as an arts worker. Having it out to practice and running another centre on top of that, then we will we will do that will help people install. And then I will pretty much be glued to the computer as much as possible, trying not to be responsive to emails because it’s a very easy trap to fall in to for the day. And then from about 4pm, it is computers off and we’re out on the site. Putting the kind of final details on the event, this is the sort of stuff that artists won’t get to most of them. And the type of stuff that as a curator that I’m interested in doing and as caretakers of Testing Grounds, it’s built into position descriptions and an attitude that we will do for people on their behalf. Just things like making sure furniture’s in the right space, arranging plants, making sure there’s freshwater out all those little things that are really about hosting hosting the artist and the audience that’s about to arrive and it’s all ready to go in an in a nice way. And often checking with the artists constantly throughout the day. But it’s particularly at that 4pm mark at 6pm checking they are not freaking out. My general kind of attitude is I say this to people, you know, they shouldn’t be on site still at 4pm they often are, but they should be at home having a shower and having a little relax, come back for the event. I know that’s a lot easier to say. I know that is a lot easier to say than it is to do. And then it rolls into the event and then from about six to eight will be a kind of hosts for the event walking around chatting to people just generally being present. It’s really important for obviously as a worker of the site to be there to be interested in investment talking to people networking, that sort of thing. And then generally, if I’ve got another show to go to sometimes if I see a theatre show or something then I’m kind of I give myself the permission to leave at 8pm. Events at Testing Grounds go till 11 otherwise, otherwise I might just stick around but really I kind of let even if I’m sticking around I’ll let myself off the hook and I’ll relax a lot more. And then I but then if I stay I will inevitably end up helping pack up so we’re gonna have about mid night. Yeah, and those are pretty pretty long days.
Kiera Brew Kurec 49:30
And now you have Centre for Dramaturgy and Curation on Saturday.
Arie Rain Glorie 49:35
Yes. Now we have that on Saturday, so working six days a week this year. And now that also involves throughout my day always I have my personal email, the Centre for Dramaturgy and Curation email on my phone. So I’m always I don’t have social media, any personal accounts. I have a work Testing Grounds Instagram account, because it’s a really good way to put the message out there about our events, but I have not been on social media personally for about three years. But what I do instead, like a habitual smoker is check my emails every five minutes. Yeah, gotta get that like satisfying bing. But I deal with my personal practice throughout the day as well, just quick little emails at a night that we don’t have events on where I don’t have to see art or I’m not seeing a show. I’ll be at home, generally until about 9pm working on my own practice cooking dinner, you know, those kind of emails and things and I absolutely conk out at 9pm and watch TV.
Kiera Brew Kurec 50:43
Do you mind running us through a bit of the logistics of what it has been to set up CDC.
Arie Rain Glorie 50:49
Yeah. So CDC is an interesting example where it’s happened quite quickly. In July, so six months ago, my partner who was overseas he was on a research trip, and we were kind of emailing back and forth. I had known that he had wanted to start up a kind of space for writers.
Kiera Brew Kurec 51:13
Sure. Do you want to just explain what Mark does as well.
Arie Rain Glorie 51:16
So Mark Pritchard is a dramaturg and he works at Malthouse theatre. For those who don’t know, Malthouse is kind of one of Australia’s largest independent theatre companies. A dramaturg is somebody who studies how plays work. So a theatre company will have a dramaturg on staff who edit scripts, works with the writers, works with the directors and represents the company’s visions and agenda while advocating for the artists. So we came up with the idea over emails while he was away, and then we talked about it more when he got back we got excited. It was one of us mentioned the title, the Centre for Dramaturgy and Curation. And I think at that moment, it was something that clicked and fell into place for us. We felt like there’s a real gap in the market for this, where these two traditions really sit side by side, but then they’re so similar, but they’re also incredibly worlds apart most people, a lot of people not most people, a lot of people are making art now where you need dramaturgy. And it’s actually a word that I’ve noticed in the last year or two that the visual arts have started to throw around quite a lot.
Nick Breedon 52:37
It’s a fun word anyway,
Arie Rain Glorie 52:38
Dramaturd! (Laughter) When I want to piss Mark off. We have been together five years and our whole relationship has been pretty much having dinner, drinking wine and arguing about differences and similarities between visual art and theatre. So we just kind of felt like it’s time to put that dialogue out on display. We’re not the only people were having this conversation.
Kiera Brew Kurec 53:06
So it sounds like CDC is gonna become a really amazing resource for people to access.
Arie Rain Glorie 53:13
We, I think, in the in the setting up something that we discussed early on is I mean, we hope we do hope this is something amazing, but we’re actually also okay, if it’s not. And I think that’s really important, taking the pressure off. And I think this goes back to the kind of the attitude of, you know, all the exhibitions I did in first year of uni of like having this attitude that it’s okay to put things out there. And if it ends in a year, if it ends in two years, that’s totally ok it doesn’t mean it’s a failure. You just don’t call it an organization, you just call it a project before as an end. (Laughter)
Nick Breedon 53:49
it was always meant to be temporary.
Arie Rain Glorie 53:52
But we’re interested in meaning something to a particular group of people at a particular time and space. So it’s okay. If it you know, and we don’t know what it is going to be yet we’re interested in and this is something that I very much picked up from Testing Grounds and Site Works as a way to operate. It’s almost a design question. We don’t know what it is yet. We’re not gonna go out there guns blazing, saying is this, this and this, we need people to tell us. And then we need people to tell us whether it’s useful as well.
Nick Breedon 54:23
Do you want to talk us through some of the biggest resources that you’ve had sort of available to you, you know, throughout your practice that have really kind of sustained you?
Arie Rain Glorie 54:33
Definitely friends and an arts community. One of the same really. Although friends that are not in the arts community have been incredibly supportive as well. That’s Yeah, friends. You know, as someone I don’t have any family, immediate family in this city. I’ve got very little extended family in this city. Yeah, so art family, queer family, you know, everyone’s got it well maybe not. Your crew of people, definitely, I mean, hands down and the amount of times that you know, I’m really happy now that I’m in a place where I can turn around and pay people to do things that the amount of times people have worked for me for free. But no, I do talk about this all. You know, I often argue with Mark about this quite a lot, though. debate. (Laughter) We only have polite debates. Is you know, obviously this big kind of question about whether you pay people or not, it’s not really a question you should pay people. But as but I also think that as an independent artist, it’s okay to ask your community to make work with that is what we do we make work with each other. Yeah. But I recognize how many people did that for me, to allow me to put on things like Love City, which allowed me to get some reputation, which allowed me you know, to prove,
Kiera Brew Kurec 56:03
I think it’s not over asking
Nick Breedon 56:06
also instrumentalizing relationships with people too much.
Kiera Brew Kurec 56:10
Yeah. And being available in return to be able to do things for free for people or put your hand up and say, I can come over and like, help you rearrange your studio or whatever.
Nick Breedon 56:21
Ultimate barter economy.
Kiera Brew Kurec 56:22
It is.
Arie Rain Glorie 56:24
Yeah. And that’s like, it’s the biggest kind of advice to anybody is just just be interested. Just like the you know, if you’re not I feel like if you’re not someone that likes coming to help install that doesn’t like all those sorts of things, then maybe you don’t like it enough. Yeah, because it is yeah, we do really rely on each other.
Nick Breedon 56:47
Not always asking like, what’s what’s in it for you always.
Arie Rain Glorie 56:50
And a part of the curation style, especially of people that have worked for me for free, you know, that making sure that you are giving them a really good experience, getting the best people along to see their work that you possibly can, to relax as the curator, you do not get to override their creative decisions, you know, there’s a lot of people that have a kind of dictatorial style, you know, stress out if they can’t get the artist to do what they want.
Nick Breedon 57:20
I’ve had people tell me to take things down on the opening night. unacceptable.
Arie Rain Glorie 57:25
Yeah. Yeah. And the biggest thing about that, it’s just lists, like just listening and saying, when an artist says, you know, their work, you know, they’ve agreed to be a part of your show. You’re working on a really tight budget, you know, you’ve got to ask the artist like, Yeah, what am I doing for you? curators work for artists.
Kiera Brew Kurec 57:44
yeah, sometimes even as an artist, you kind of forget that these arts jobs exist, because artists are making art.
Arie Rain Glorie 57:54
Yes, yeah, totally. Yeah. And I get people like at Testing Ground thanking me, you know, when they’re happy with things that I’ve done. Like oh how can I repay you and I am like Oh, no, I get paid.
Kiera Brew Kurec 58:05
I have a job because you are making work.
Arie Rain Glorie 58:13
Festivals are a really great place to leverage resources. And I’ve done a lot of work I started focusing towards I can’t remember last time, I actually made something that was not in a festival program, even if it is just in a gallery. They have mentorship programs they have they often have these things where they really nurture people, I think there’s that kind of sense of excitement, also you get more audiences. And that’s a huge resource through festivals and being included in people’s programs. And I would actually say this is a bit left field but for me, theatre has always been a huge resource to me, in the way that it’s a resource of knowledge in the way that I’m incredibly oppositional to it. And I will kind of dissect everything about it. And for me, I don’t know why but it really helps me to work out what visual art is. So and I seeing other shows, not visual art shows is an incredible resource. And having people that can get free tickets to things is incredible. And being in the gay mafia who run the ticket world is incredible.
Nick Breedon 59:26
gay mafia what a resource!
Kiera Brew Kurec 59:30
So to kind of round it all out. If you were talking back to younger Arie, who was at school, or Arie that was coming into Melbourne art scene from moving from WA What advice would you pass on?
Arie Rain Glorie 59:51
See many different types of art. Don’t just go to galleries. God, there’s such a huge world outside of that, especially at art school. Don’t just go see artist run initiative shows go to cultural and community events work out creativity that’s not just to do with commercial galleries and kind of contemporary art with a capital C. Because often there is so much more to draw from from community and cultural practice. I didn’t do enough of that. I thought community was such a dirty word for such a long time. And now I’m kind of fully embracing it. God now it sounds like I feel that that I’m saying commercial and stuff is a dirty word. It’s not it’s not at all. I like it all. There’s room for everything. Yeah, there’s room for everything. That’s what I would say. Yeah. in your life, and in kind of professional practice, and just soak it all up. And be patient. Yeah, I guess there’s no one way to get there.
Kiera Brew Kurec 1:00:51
Yeah.
Arie Rain Glorie 1:00:52
You’re gonna look for ways to get there. But it all just, I mean, as I said, just be interested and be active. I feel like that’s a really privileged thing to say. But it’ll work itself out. I guess I can only really speak from a place of privilege. You know. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, give give 10 fold back.
Nick Breedon 1:01:14
Mm hmm.
Kiera Brew Kurec 1:01:17
That was fantastic. Thank you so much for everything that you’ve just shared with us.
Nick Breedon 1:01:21
Yeah. Thank you. And so where, where can people find out more about you and CDC do you have a website you’d like to put a shout out for and yeah, we can link up to Yeah,
Arie Rain Glorie 1:01:39
so I have an artist website, which is arierainglorie.com You can find out for the Centre for dramaturgy and curation at https://www.dramaturgyxcuration.com/. So that’s with an X in the middle and testing-grounds.com.au testing grounds with a dash in the middle.
Kiera Brew Kurec 1:02:02
Or go to Testing Grounds Arie is always here
Arie Rain Glorie 1:02:08
Yeah, yeah. Especially for Testing Grounds just drop on to site, you won’t get a sense of it unless you are there.
Kiera Brew Kurec 1:02:16
it’s definitely an experience. Well, thank you so much for coming today.
Arie Rain Glorie 1:02:22
Thanks
Kiera Brew Kurec 1:02:27
This episode was recorded on the sovereign lands of the Kulin nation, we acknowledge the traditional owners of the land the Wurundjeri people and pay our respects to elder’s past, present and emerging.
Nick Breedon 1:02:40
Thanks for listening. You can listen to other episodes and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. You can rate and leave us a nice review so people can find us. Stay up to date with us on Instagram at @propracpodcast, or send us an email at propracpod@gmail.com