Mini MtttiL'biiinii

m.'

+*.

A ^«

Level 2,111 Campbell Street
SURRY HILLS NSW 2010
+61 2 9281 1550
islacks@projectroom.com
www.imperialslacks.com
16 July 2002

RE:

CHIASMA
Web Transmission

Imperial Slacks (Sydney, Australia) is pleased to be involved in Chiasma, a collaborative
project with Folly (Lancaster, UK) and Grunt (Vancouver, Canada).

Our brief as a collective and gallery has been to provide space (real and virtual) for
artists to exhibit and collaborate. We have fostered this through associations with other
organisations and galleries within Australia and are enthused at the possibility of
expanding this to involve international organisations through the Chiasma project.

As nominated artist for the Sydney transmission, Lea Donnan is an interdisciplinary
practitioner working with performance, installation and video. Her performance work
skims from a universal lost' consciousness of fragmented information.

Donnan

examines points of intersection in the human experience through time. The structures of
idolatry and practices of worship or entrancement are borrowed as a means of using
common human experience as a link to the past.

Attached is a brief introduction to the Imperial Slacks collective detailing some of the
collaborative projects that have been developed.

Warm Regards,

Melody Willis
for Imperial Slacks

CT

L6a Donnan
Imperial Slacks Nominated Artist

AN INTRODUCTION TO IMPERIAL SLACKS
The Imperial Slacks Collective comprises 15 board members. One member, Laura Jordan, currently resides
in Lancaster and has offered to act as a conduit/representative for Imperial Slacks in the UK. She has
extensive experience in new media.
As a collective, Imperial Slacks provides artists (young, emerging, mid-career, local, national, international)
with an affordable, generously sized project space within the inner city. The site offers a forum for artists to
explore experimental projects. During the last twenty months the gallery has diversified from solo and group
exhibitions to audio events, a new media conference, workshops and performance projects. The wider
space of the Imperial Slacks warehouse consists of artists' residential studios where some of the collective
reside.

Our initiative has formed a nexus that shares facilities, technical support and inspires an active

visual arts community.
Our association with larger Australian organisations such as Artspace, Camivale, Tess de Quincey Etc,
What is Music? Festival, dLux and the College of Fine Arts (UNSW) has provided artists with an
intermediary platform linking artist run initiatives with established institutions. We are supported through
Australia Council funding which has allowed us to purchase a data projector that assists our multimedia
events.
Imperial Slacks has developed several initiatives that have offered new platforms for emerging artists to
exhibit their work. Among those was the launch of Serial 7's, a video publication that showcases the work of
7 emerging video artists per issue. Serial 7's has become a biannual event on the Imperial Slacks calendar.
It aims is to provide a regular space for emerging video artists to show work via projection in a gallery
context.
In October 2001 Imperial Slacks hosted the TAZ (temporary autonomous zone) event in conjunction with
dLux media arts as part of the two week "T\LTW conference.

Free multimedia workshops were led by

established artists and theorists who had travelled to Sydney for the conference. These workshops and the
open nature of the TAZ space, generated collaborations on a number of politically motivated projects and
web-based events. Significantly, the Boat People project led by Deborah Kelly formed an image of a colonial
ship with the text Boat People underneath. The image was projected onto the shell of the Opera House and
onto a church in inner Sydney.
In 2001, Imperial Slacks hosted a series experimental sound/ new music events titled impermanentaudio
(http://laudible.net/impaud/) curated by Caleb K. Fourteen events were held providing a space for local,
interstate and international artists to perform to a dedicated listening audience. Performances were heard
from established artists like Francisco L6pez (Spain), Stevie Wishart, Pimmon, Hecker, Scott Horscroft,
d.Haines, to first timers: Stasis Duo and emerging sound collective: Audio Alice.
Australia:
Imperial Slacks, Sydney
Email:
islacks@projectroom.com
Web:
www.imperialslacks.com
Address: Level 2,111 Campbell Street
SURRY HILLS NSW 2010 AUSTRALIA
Telephone:
+61 2 9281 1150