Tethered ARI: the city’s newly formed artist run initiative

Tethered ARI is a newly formed artist run initiative based in Brisbane. We caught up with two members of the ARI, Angel and Milan, at the opening night of their debut exhibition, Love & Rage. We talked about Tethered ARI is, its plans for next year and what the exhibition is about.

Tethered ARI: Love & Rage exhibition / Image: Mayatu Nova

What is Tethered ARI?

Milan: Tethered Ari is an artist run initiative. We basically formed this collective because we all are really good friends…and wanted to collaborate outside of uni.

Tethered Art is comprised of myself. Who is Milan, Angel, Arlo, Gretel, and Sophia.

[Talking about how ‘Tethered’ came about] I think Sophia, one of our members, drew it from the book, The Little Prince. It’s a tethering of each other together in a connected way. As an ARI we're based in like very similar principles to a lot of ARIs: focusing on community and community events and, wanting to make it accessible for everyone - as art should be, you know.

Tethered ARI: Love & Rage exhibition / Image: Mayatu Nova

What is Tethered ARI’s vision for next year?

Milan: So basically this, this event is a ground level event to put ourselves together. But we're looking for next year to do more of collabora[tions] with other members of the artist community, like a bigger group show with different themes. That's like our trajectory basically.

We've been working on this since like about January or so. So, it's been a, it's been a long motion which, with most events, it takes a long time to create, but I think after this [and] starting our wheels back up again, [the next event] will be a lot sooner. And a lot more collaborative.

What can you tell us about this exhibition, Love & Rage? 

Angel: So, Love and Rage, it's our first debut exhibition, [it] includes all five of the ARI members. And basically, what we've done is we decided to create two artworks that has a response to both the idea of love and rage… [and] how we interpret that in different forms.

We’ve explored that in very different mediums. There was textile. I used laser cut. Milan was pencil and watercolour. Sophia was video art. Arlo was textiles as well as crochet. We were really honing into reflecting what and how that resonates with us, especially thinking how both love and rage can coincide together.

Milan: I might just add to that, tonight and all throughout the weekend as well. We have little corners of the literature that we've used and based our works off of. So you can sit down in our little nook and have like little bit of a read. We also have like process images as well, showing the artist process.

Tethered ARI: Love & Rage exhibition / Image: Mayatu Nova

What are some core principles that shape Tethered ARI?

Angel: I think what our core value for this collective is connecting together to express our ideations behind art as well as sharing our knowledge with emerging artists.

Art is slowly, sadly, becoming a bit inaccessible. So, this is really our mission to provide beginner artists or slowly emerging artists more support basically. Even though [it’s] our first exhibition, we really do want to continue the idea of making it as accessible…with payments - so tonight and every day is pay by donations. So everyone can pay as much or as little as they want because everyone should get to see all the art.

Tethered ARI: Love & Rage exhibition / Image: Mayatu Nova

What do you hope to achieve with starting a new ARI in the city?

Milan: I think it's hard because Brisbane itself…well it's [more] like Queensland doesn't really support art, does it? You look at the galleries in Queensland, like, we have Goma, but then you go to Melbourne, you go to Sydney, [and there is] so many different galleries with so much more funding. Then we go to here. What's all the funding going to? It's going to footy. The freaking football.

So with Brisbane, that's the reason why everyone moves [to] cities with much more expanded portfolios than our scene because there's not really much here. Even for event spaces, there are a lot of good ones, but there's also not a lot of accessibility with them as well, and it's hard to break into that market, especially [for] professional settings.

Angel: Yeah. And to add onto that, like, because we're all just beginning, we really want to make sure that we are sharing our knowledge and experience towards everyone because there are just some knowledges that can be gate kept, whether it's curating or how to establish a secure space or marketing yourself towards galleries.

We want to engage with the community to share what we've learned over the past three years because why should that be gate kept.

Art is for everyone, so don't hide that away.