'Young artists should have a right to invent the world, rather than just receive it': Meet Honours coordinator Dane Mitchell

Honours coordinator Dane Mitchell
Dane Mitchell, photo by David Straight.

Dane Mitchell is a multi-award-winning artist and Head of Honours at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). He answered some questions for us about his own practice and the enriching possibilities that arise through pursuing an Honours year in Visual Art.

Hi Dane, tell us a little about yourself – your background and how you ended up at the VCA.

I grew up in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, in Aoteaaroa New Zealand.

I went through art school in Aotearoa New Zealand, and have had a practice based out of that country for over 25 years. I've been fortunate enough to travel a lot for my work and exhibit internationally, including representing Aotearoa New Zealand at the Venice Biennale and participated in about 10 other biennales. I moved to Melbourne for the role here at VCA. I was really excited and attracted by this place, so I was thrilled to come and join the team here as head of Honours.

What themes do you deal with in your art practice?

I’m interested, broadly speaking, in the conceptual tension between containment and the uncontainable. I'm interested in examining structures like museums, encyclopedias and language, other forms of containment and the willful encroachment upon those containers by forces that can't be contained, things like vapors, aromas, disappearances.

I’m very much interested in the epistemics of containment, the way that we in the West seek to hold the world in things like zoos and museums... how we seek to contain the world.

"In 2019 I represented Aotearoa New Zealand at the Venice Biennale with a work entitled Post hoc. You can watch a video here made by filmmaker Adam Luxton following me realise the work.”

Watch the video here

How would you describe the Honours year at the VCA?

I think the Honours year can be a kind of Goldilocks moment for young artists. It's a container (there’s that word again) that allows students an intensive amount of time, space and freedom to explore, develop and open up their practice. It also gives them the opportunity to develop a meaningful relationship with a supervisor. For many students, this will be the first time they get that mentorship experience. I think Honours is also a time when many students start thinking about what they're doing as research. It’s a time to devise language for what they're doing, what's at stake in the work and why it matters in the world.

Why study Honours at the VCA?

Students at the VCA really see that they are part of something bigger than themselves.

I think part of that is to do with where we’re situated in Melbourne’s art precinct, and the fact that there are so many artistic disciplines together here on campus. I think our students understand the implications of their practice beyond their own studios, and the tangibility, or the physicality, of that experience in this particular location.

Everything we do matters in relation, to the world, to others, to one another. We're always asking students to be cognisant of context in their work. So, it seems vital that we are plugged into that specific context here.

There is a really rich variety of seminars and lectures delivered by incredible academics, which open up the space for students to understand what a methodology for them might be, and what research might be relevant for them. The supervisory relationship is key and your own research interests will determine the shape of your final paper.

Your work deals a lot with vanishing, obsolescence and loss. In this time of mass devastation, extinction, etcetera, how do you see your role as an artist? 

I can't speak to the role of all artists because I think that's what's so beautiful about what we do - there's no one way to be an artist. And personally speaking, I'm not interested in a sanctimonious voice, I don't assume to know more. But I do believe the world is a beautiful, weird, complex and confusing place.

We live in an  incendiary present, a really problematic moment in time. It might be true that all times are, but it's a question worth asking:, what might I re-frame in the world through my own thinking and my own making that could elucidate some other means of understanding the world around us? I hope that something might open for me in the process of making, and for viewers experiencing my work, around the complex set  of relations we each have to the materials of the world – both natural and synthetic – and the forms of knowledge containment ‘we’ use to make sense of them.

Dane Mitchell, photo by David Straight.

How do you conceptualise your role, working with the students in this Honours program?

I think it's my job to create an environment within Honours where whatever is at stake for each of those young artists, they have the support and capability to explore it. Be that in a state of agitation about an issue or material, or a state of reflection about the world, or a state of combativeness or relinquishing control... whatever it is they need, I'm up for supporting that.

Because these young artists should have a right to invent the world, rather than just receive it.