Australian Exclusive

Experience an unscripted exchange between two extraordinary artists whose practices transform the everyday into the poetic. Visionary American artist and musician Lonnie Holley, whose work preserves beauty from the ruins of history, joins Australian artist Kelly Lovemonster for a tender conversation on art, liberation and the making of meaning in fractured times.

Together they trace how lives, like materials, are continuously reworked – how the ordinary becomes sacred through attention, and how art can hold both grief and grace at once. Their dialogue moves slowly and deliberately, like a river remembering its source, opening a soft space for listening, improvising and being together.

The afternoon concludes with the Australian launch and signing of Holley’s new monograph Lonnie Holley (Rizzoli, 2024), a luminous record of an outsider prophet’s practice that reminds us the world is never broken, only ever in the act of repair.

Lonnie Holley will also perform at Sydney Festival as a solo artist, and in unique, live spontaneous musical collaborations with Australian artists.

See Lonnie Holley
See Lonnie Holley and Kankawa Nagarra
See Lonnie Holley and Yasmina Sadiki

Music Talk Summer School

Lonnie Holley

USA

Lonnie Holley (b. Birmingham, AL, 1950) is a multidisciplinary visual artist and improvisational musician, whose work explores themes of personal and collective history, racial inequality, environmental catastrophe, and American identity. Born into the harsh reality of Jim-Crow era Alabama, Holley’s early life was defined by transience, cruelty, and economic hardship. Separated from his family as a young boy, Holley spent three years at The Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, a brutal state institution that has been called a modern-day slave plantation. Growing up impoverished, Holley made do with what he could find, often the broken and discarded objects of human consumption – materials he refers to as, “trash, garbage, and debris.” His ability to combine these objects into beautiful and socially resonant works of art made Holley a leading figure in the long-overlooked movement of Black Southern visual artists. Holley’s work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in major museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, and many others.

Kelly “Lovemonster” Dezart-Smith

Australia

Kelly “Lovemonster” Dezart-Smith is a curator, creative producer and writer living on Gadigal country. They work across contemporary art, experimental performance, culture and nightlife. Their creative practice aims to centre care, bla(c)k dreaming and narratives of individuals and communities who are systematically marginalized. Their hope is through the sharing of the latter stories and artworks we can move towards a more just, equitable and caring world.

Lovemonster is part of the inaugural Parallel Curatorial Fellowship. A dynamic group of curators and art practitioners that are looking at structural change with, beside and beyond the museum. They are also the former public program curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, MCA Late.

Lovemonster writes about nightlife, performance and culture. They are a contributor to Archer Magazine, SF Bay Guardian, SFMOMA’s Open Space, and the previous co-editor of 4U MAG.

@girlwhereyouat

An afternoon with Lonnie Holley

Lonnie Holley

Kelly “Lovemonster” Dezart-Smith

You might also like

Waitlist

Register Interest