Professor Melinda Rackham

Melinda Rackham is an artist, curator and author.

When the internet was young, Melinda Rackham wove curiously poetic interactive tales on networked intimacy and identity [1995], now preserved in Australian and international collections. Alongside designing award winning web narratives and coding soft skinned Virtual Reality worlds, her impact on global networked media includes founding and producing the lively multidisciplinary dialogue of -empyre- forum [2002] which continues today as a vital critical platform for academics, artists, collectors, curators and writers.  

Melinda introduced diverse internet practices and emerging technologies to new audiences as ACMI’s first Networked Art curator in 2004: Networked Now; commissioned and developed engaging art+science programs for the Royal Institution of Australia; and presented Dreamworlds : Australian Moving Image on multiple massive public screens in China during the Beijing Olympics. She has also led ANAT (Australia’s foremost national art and technology organization), introducing expansive experimental programs in sound and mobile art practices; and participated in artistic, curatorial and academic capacities at innumerable Conferences, Biennales, Film Festivals and events such as Ars Electronica, Documenta and ISEA. 

Her broad experience encompasses art and writing residencies in Australia, Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the Netherlands, and the UK, as well as living for extended periods in recent years on the Aeroplane Homelands near Pukatja (Ernabella) in the Central Australian Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY)?Lands.  Active in her community as a mentor, board member and consultant, since 2017 Rackham has been an Adjunct Research Professor in UniSA Creative at the University of South Australia.

Melinda’s prolific texts critique, explore and poetically intervene into the worlds of art, artists, feminisms, social justice, and environmental issues; winning awards for Writing in New Media at the Adelaide Festival [2000] and the SALA National Art Writers Award [2018]. Recently Professor Rackham revisited the slimey low-res world of cyberfeminism for a series of comissioned essays on VNS Matrix, Australia’s global Cyber supergroup. This pedagogical archive [2109] comes at a time when their game works, Manifestos and newer ecological treatises are reverberating across the interwebs and being re/discovered by a new generation.

Probing the patriarchy at work, CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions since 2008 [2021], is her third book - a timely exploration of embedded gender inequity in the artworld, co-authored with CoUNTess founder Elvis Richardson.  Melinda’s substantial monograph Catherine Truman - Touching Distance [2106] examine the many facets of a jeweller’s career from the visceral precision of sculptural form to working with medical researchers; while the co-authored anthology ADOPTED [2017] presents raw poetry and prose from adult adoptees on loss, trauma and reclaiming self.   

Working across genres, Rackham’s Instagram based performative parodies of 30 contemporary Australian female artist’s works, #remakemistresses [2020], scrutinises cultural and museological under-representation of women. Living across the traditional land of the Yangkalyarindjera clan of the Ramindjeri people and the traditional Country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains, Melinda is currently immersed in life writing Bias Binding, her intergenerational memoir of art, attachment and adoption, while amusing herself with NFTs.

Find out more at her domain: www.subtle.net

Qualifications

• Doctor of Philosophy University of NSW

Work history

2010-2017:   Selected Professional Practice                  

Academic:Adjunct Reearch Professor, 2017-,  Art, Archetecture and Design, UniSA, AdelaideAdjunct Professor, 2009-11,  School of Media and Communications, RMIT, Melbourne

Author/essayist:ADOPTED, Dunning, Gregory, Johnston & Rackham, 112 p, IdentityRitesBetween a Rock, Runway - Australian Experimental Art, # 32, Sydney/onlineCatherine Truman : Touching Distance, SALA Monograph, 192 p, Wakefield Press everyone works but the vacant lot, essay for Settlement, Elvis Richardson, Hugo Michelle Gallery, AdelaideWith the Tip of a Needle, Garland Magazine, #2, ed Kevin Murray, MelbourneManifest de Stillaire, The Microscope Project Catalogue, Flinders Uni Art MuseumLove Bytes - Stendhal Syndrome in Second Life, Interfaces of Performance, eds Janis Jefferies, Maria X, Rachel Zerihan, Ashgate, London 2009, 180-198Between(the)Gaps: International Indigenous Moving Image, Eyeline #74, Brisbane,A research on new media development of the world (15): -empyre-, by Li Zhenhua, Ed Sanderson, Melinda Rackham, Contemporary Art and Investment, No 52 2011, China

Committees:The Space Between, Public Art Monument for Forced Adoptions, Adelaide Peer Assessor Cross-artform, Residences, Organisations, Australia Council for the ArtsDigital Communities, Prix Ars Electronica, Austria Visual Art, Craft and Design Committee: Arts SA, South Australia

Curatorial2011-12 Partner Curator, Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus) Adelaide2010 Curator: Dreamworlds, ACC and AIDC funded Moving Image, Beijing and Xian, China

Public Art:WIMP: Windows, Icons, Menus & Pointers, Large Screen animations commissioned by Adelaide City Council for Rundle Lantern

Speaker:In Other Tongues Creative Summit, artdotearth, Dartington, Devon, UK<br>GOMA Talks - Is technology feminism's new frontier? QAGOMA Brisbane, <br>GOMA TV and Radio National Big Ideas<br>Attachment, Transforming Image and Text, Conference, UWS, Sydney<br>Art of the Networked Practice, Nanyang University, Singapore/online<br>Saturation, Microwave Festival, Hong Kong<br>Glocal Unfolding, Textures -Society for Literature,  Science and the Arts, Riga, Latvia <br>Delete - Social UnNetworking, Art in the Global Present, Adelaide Festival, Australia

Residencies:In Other Tongues intimate geographies, ecologies of conversation, Dartington, Devon, UK<br>Sauerbier House, WhiteWash exhibition installation, performance and website <br>Bundanon Trust Writers Residency, Attachment Memoir, NSW <br>Asialink Arts Management Residency: Videotage, Hong Kong

1996 - 2009:         Selected Media Arts Practice

Artist - Networked Media Artist exhibiting at:Arco Electronico Spain; Art Center Nabi South Korea; Walker Art Center Minneapolis; ICC Tokyo; Biennale de Montreal; Biennial of Buenos; Documenta X11; FILE Sao Paulo; Netherlands Media Art Institute; ISEA Nagoya, Japan, Baltic; Cornerhouse Manchester; Pompideu Centre Paris; Transmediale Germany; Microwave Festival,Hong Kong; Moscow XXIII International Film Festival; and 2004 Australian Culture Now, Cybercultures, Experimenta Festival, MAAP and Perspecta 99 in Australia.

Author/essayist/reviewer:7 x book chapters on Media, Performance and Virtual and Networked EnvironmentsArticles and reviews on Australian and international Media Art in Art Monthly, Artlink, Eyeline, Intelligent Agent, Mesh, Neural, Photoflle, Realtime, Rhizome

Committee Member:        Advisory Committee Art, Architecture and Design, University of South Australia; International Programming Committee of ISEA; Steering Committee Re_live International Media Art Histories, Melbourne; ArtsPeak Cultural Policy in the Arts and Education Committee; Editorial Advisory Board of Fibreculture Journal.

Curator: 2003-04   Networked Media, Australian Center for the Moving Image, Melbourne

Executive Director:2005-09   Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), National

Founder and Producer:2002-06  -empyre- International New Media online Forum, International

Juror:Ars Electronica, FILE, ISEA, National New Media Award, Rhizome, Turbulence

Prizes:2001 Sound-Space Award for Virtual Worlds, Stuttgart Filmwinter, Germany2000 Faulding Award for Writing in Multimedia, Adelaide Festival, Adelaide1999  Macromedia /Internet.au, Web In Motion Award for online animation 1999 Gram: Trails of the Future, International Internet Prize, Argentina

Residencies:Banff, Canada; Artspace, NSW; Polar Circuit, Finland; Solar Circuit, Plymouth, New Zealand

Speaker:Adelaide Festival, Aotearoa Digital Arts, ARC Biennial, Baltan Labs, BEAP, CAIIA, Craft Australia, Graphite/Siggraph, ISEA, Media Art Histories, Montreal Film and New Media  Festival, National Library of Australia, Subtle Technologies, Vital Signs, VR-SIG.