SPEAKER is a series of talks by contemporary artists, thinkers and curators. Our Semester 2 Speaker series presents artist talks by prominent artists. Spaces are limited for these talks so please be sure to register through Eventbrite.

Almagul Menlibayeva
Almagul Menlibayeva (born 1969 in Almaty, Kazakhstan) is an award-winning contemporary artist who works mostly in multi-channel video, photography and mixed media installation. She lives and works in Germany and Kazakhstan. Menlibayeva’s work addresses issues such as critical explorations of Soviet modernity; social, economic; and political transformations in post-Soviet Central Asia; and decolonial reimaginings of gender, environmental degradation, and Eurasian nomadic and indigenous cosmologies and mythologies.

DATE Thursday 8 August
TIME 6–7pm
LOCATION RMIT Building 80, Level 1, Room 2

William Yang
William Yang is a documentary photographer. His talk with Image projection is about his engagement with the Sydney GLBTQI community since the days of gay liberation till the present. It includes coming out during in the seventies, photographing the commercial scene of Oxford Street and demonstrations to decriminalise homosexuality in the eighties, and the AIDS pandemic in the early nineties. He had a friendship with Peter Tully and David McDiarmid, both gay artists, who were both separately artistic directors of the Mardi Gras and who died of AIDS in the nineties. William has photographed the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras since the early eighties and the story of its ups and downs is closely tied to the broad story of gay Sydney.

DATE Thursday 15 August
TIME 6–7pm
LOCATION RMIT Building 12, Level 13, Room 2

Darren Sylvester
In this presentation, Sylvester will discuss the beginnings, research and outcomes of his 2018 exhibition, Out of Life that began with the purchase of an unknown space costume from an auction house in Los Angeles.

DATE Monday 19 August
TIME 12.30–1.30pm
LOCATION RMIT Building 80, Level 6, Room 5

David Rosetzky
Join artist David Rosetzky as he discusses the collaborative process involved in the development of 'Composite Acts' his new video commission for the 2019 Channels Festival, as well as his broader practice across photography and video.

DATE Monday 26 August
TIME 12.30–1.30pm
LOCATION RMIT Building 80, Level 6, Room 5

Catherine Truman
An experimental talk based on the absence, transition, processing and observation of light.

DATE Thursday 12 September
TIME 6–7pm
LOCATION RMIT Building 80, Level 1, Room 2

SPEAKER is a series of talks by contemporary artists, thinkers and curators. It is a space to come together to listen to, think about and discuss a range of ideas, art practices and cultural issues. SPEAKER is presented by RMIT School of Art, Art+History+Theory+Cultures and INTERSECT. The talks are open to the public and take place in lecture halls across RMIT's city campus.

RMIT:ART:INTERSECT SPEAKER

David Rosetzky, Half Brother, 2014, High definition Video, 10 minutes 33 seconds, Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne.