 |
| --- Melinda Rackham, Dreamworlds: curator's text, 2010, (extract) www.dreamworlds.com.au/text.htm |
Melinda Rackham is an writer, artist and curator, based in Adelaide, South Australia. Initially drawn to sculpture and performance, she became a pioneer of Australian Internet Art, exhibiting her online interactive art works at major global festivals and Biennials from 1995. Winning awards nationally and internationally, her artwork is represented in Media collections in Europe and the Americas; taught globally in University courses; and archived for posterity by Pandora in Australia and Cornell University, USA.
 |
| --- Melinda Rackham, Steampunk: gunpowder and cups of tea, 2010, (extract) Artlink, The Underground, Australia, vol 30 no 2, www.subtle.net/archive/RackhamSteampunk302.pdf |
Over the last decade, through roles such as Networked Art Curator at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), Melinda has introduced interactive electronic art to wide audiences and opened up new arenas for artists working with Science and Emerging Technologies. More recently as Adjunct Professor of Media and Communications at RMIT University, Dr Rackham curated and researched mediated art forms in public spaces in China and Hong Kong. She is currently writing a memoir focused on adoption and identity.
 |
| --- www.subtle.net - Melinda Rackham's website |
I am currently writing my first novel - 'Attachment' - a memoir of my own adoption and of bearing a child at
15, also to be removed by adoption. The narrative oscillates across 55 years
with a sense of fluid identity shaped by the double truncation of
adoption. The text intersects with fictions
I have created in online virtual reality worlds, weaving a rich tapestry behind
a deeply moving lived experience of singularity, grief and loss, common to the
150,000 Australian mothers who had babies taken often by unlawful and unethical
practices from the 1950s to the 1970s. Being accomplished and settled in
some areas of life, and an emerging writer working in a new genre is both a
vulnerable and exciting juncture. I would appreciate the time and space at
Gunyah to contemplate the progress of my new work and hopefully to unravel some
knotty structural issues; to prune my increasingly branching narrative; and
enhance the readability and accessibility of my memoir.
(Melinda Rackham, proposal for 2014 Gunyah residency)
 |
| --- Melinda Rackham, Coded Cloth, 2009, (extract) www.subtle.net/pdf/MRLEON.pdf |
To find out more about Melinda's work go to her website www.subtle.net
