towprojects

Characters book research

admin — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:14:44 +0000

Characters (2011)
Author: Stephen Banham
Researcher: Christine Eid
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Co-publisher: State Library of Victoria

Christine Eid was commissioned as a researcher on the Characters book project (2011). Written by Stephen Banham, published by Thames and Hudson and co-published by the State Library of Victoria, the book tells the rich cultural stories of a city, in this case Melbourne, through its signage.

Working alongside Banham, Eid identified some of the key sites for the book by exploring the rich collections at the State Library of Victoria, National Trust of Australia (Victoria), City of Melbourne, Royal Historical Society of Victoria, Italian Historical Society and a number of local historical societies. The three year project involved Eid undertaking extensive and meticulous research and in some cases provided a foundation for Banham’s primary research. A diverse range of material such as newspaper articles, publications, photographs, sketches, maps, posters, architectural drawings and artwork were sourced, and at times uncovered, bringing a deeper understanding and context to the signage sites.

Characters

Letterbox

Paper City exhibition

admin — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 12:38:37 +0000

14 July – 31 October 2011
City Gallery
Ground Floor
Melbourne Town Hall
110 Swanston Street
Melbourne, Victoria
Australia

Curators: Andrew May, Christine Eid & Stephen Banham

Presented by City Gallery as part of the 2011 State of Design Festival.

Curators Andrew May, Christine Eid and Stephen Banham undertook extensive research as they sorted through over a century and a half of correspondence received by the City of Melbourne and variously housed in its Art and Heritage Collection, Archive and at the Public Record Office Victoria repository. From over 10,000 letterheads, a little more than 250 were selected as showcase items, selected for their social or historical significance, striking symbolism or distinctive design features.

Letterheads are often discarded as mere ephemera. In fact they are a significant visual source material, reflecting not only the advertising and propaganda of the business or firm but also the development of identity design as well as revealing the social progress and rich stories of a developing city.

Paper City showcases a selection of letterhead correspondence sent to the Town Clerk at the City of Melbourne from the 1840s to the present day. From Ashton’s Circus, to the Melbourne Cricket Ground through to Quist’s Coffee Shop, Paper City explores the symbolic meanings behind the rich variety of letterheads.

City Gallery
To watch a film of the exhibition installation

Photographer: Louis Porter

Circular public art commission

admin — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 09:13:35 +0000

Circular public art commission
Point Cook Town Centre
Main Street
Point Cook, Victoria
Australia

Circular is a series of eight cast-iron artworks installed along the footpath of Main Street, Point Cook, 23km from the city centre of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. Quietly integrated into the streetscape, the works playfully take the familiar form of manhole covers while referencing the stories, values and diversity of the Point Cook area.

Circular (2010) is a public art project by Melbourne artist Christine Eid from TOW and typographer Stephen Banham from Letterbox. Commissioned by VicUrban and Walker Corporation, the works form part of the Wyndham City Council collection. Art consultants Global Art Projects were the commissioning managers.

Circular Projects
Letterbox
Global Art Projects

Photographer: Andrew Lloyd

Hard Labour AWAP Seminar

admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:59:50 +0000

Hard Labour: Working women in the State Library’s collections

8 September 2010
Australian Women’s Archives Project Seminar
State Library of Victoria
328 Swanston Street
Melbourne, Victoria
Australia

Discover women at work, both past and present, in the State Library’s collections at this free seminar presented by the State Library and Australian Women’s Archives Project (AWAP).

Anne Burrows, Genealogy librarian at the State Library, will tell the story of women’s work through the collections of the State Library. Christine Eid, researcher, artist and Creative Fellow, will describe her research on Victoria’s female taxi drivers. Dr Dorothy Wickham, historian, will talk about women on the Victorian goldfields. Dr Nikki Henningham, Executive Officer of the Australian Women’s Archives Project, will discuss AWAP’s latest projects.

State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:14:48 +0000

In the Driver’s Seat: A history of Victoria’s female taxi drivers 1918–2008

State Library of Victoria
328 Swanston Street
Melbourne, Victoria
Australia

Research

In the Driver’s Seat will explore the rich social history of female taxi drivers in the Victorian taxi industry, utilising the State Library of Victoria’s unique and extensive collections.

Very little scholarly research and writing has been undertaken about the Victorian taxi industry to date – an industry that not only provides transport service, but also plays an integral role in the life of Victorian communities. In particular there has been a complete absence of studies on female taxi drivers from the State of Victoria or for that matter anywhere else in Australia. This research project aims to address this significant gap in Australia’s social history.

Throughout the history of Victoria’s taxi industy, taxi driving has appealed to a wide array of women for a diversity of reasons. For many women it provided a good fall-back position during difficult economic times or in-between jobs, while for others it presented important entrepreneurial opportunities to establish a business. Melbourne’s first female taxi driver was a solicitor and barrister who was dismissed for alleged professional misconduct. She became a taxi driver in 1918 and drove for a while before eventually returning to practice law. Some women approached the taxi business as a family concern and as such shared driving the taxicab with their husbands. Others took on the taxi profession with a great entrepreneurial vigour, gradually investing in a number of taxi licenses, which enabled them to diversify their business interests and investments.

As a recipient of the State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship (2009-2010), Christine Eid will undertake this study at the library as well as record and archive oral histories of past and present female taxi drivers, providing important source material for a book manuscript.

2009 recipients

Primavera 2009 exhibition

admin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:56:02 +0000

9 September – 22 November 2009
Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)
Circular Quay West
Sydney, New South Wales
Australia

Guest Curator: Jeff Khan

Melbourne-based guest curator and writer Jeff Khan selects nine contemporary emerging Australian artists to be part of the Primavera 2009 exhibition held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney.

With a focus on interdisciplinary practice, this year marks the 18^th edition of the annual Primavera exhibition, showcasing the work of emerging artists aged 35 years and under. Artists include Andy Best, Christine Eid, Michaela Gleave, Christopher LG Hill, Ross Manning, Wade Marynowsky, Roderick Sprigg and spat+loogie.

Christine Eid’s Transit (2006) body of work proposes to tell stories that explore and question themes of identity, acceptance and popular preconceptions of taxi drivers and Australia’s migrants. Comprising of sculptural, moving-image, installation and written works, Transit was inspired by the rich oral stories of Melbourne’s taxi entrepreneurs from Hadchit, Lebanon and further research into both Lebanese migration to Australia and the Victorian taxi industry.

Dislocation, disjuncture and change are inherent experiences in both migration and taxi driving. Whether uprooting to another part of the world or transiting the city, both acts represent mobility and the ability to transcend an identity linked to a fixed place. As such it was common amongst taxi drivers to transform their mobile space by personalizing their taxicab with ornaments hung on the rear-vision mirror or a covering over the driver’s seat. These personalized markers of identity are referenced in Transit (2006).

In 1991 the Primavera exhibition was initiated by Dr Edward and Mrs Cynthia Jackson in memory of their daughter Belinda, a talented jeweller, who died in 1990 at the age of 29. Through supporting emerging artists the exhibition celebrates renewal and optimism in art.

More information

Photographer: Jenni Carter

Characters & Spaces self-guided tour

admin — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:15:58 +0000

15 – 25 July 2009
State of Design festival
The block of Elizabeth/Swanston/Collins/Flinders streets
Melbourne, Victoria
Australia

Characters & Spaces is a self-guided tour of 17 sites in 1 city block in Melbourne that peels back their layers of design.

Research

Christine Eid was commissioned as a researcher on the project to explore the stories behind 17 sites in central Melbourne and their connections with a style of lettering, a form of architecture, a time in social history, an art movement or a sporting event. From Richard Beck’s mural on Hosie’s Hotel and its connection to the 1956 Olympic Games and the internationalism and modernity of Melbourne, the ironic hidden message in the abstract lettering in the Centreway Arcade questioning consumerism in a commercial environment to the billboard above Young and Jackson’s Hotel which was permitted because of its heritage listing for its historical precedence and cultural value as an advertising site.

Initiated and written by graphic designer and typographer Stephen Banham, the Characters and Spaces project focuses on the city block from Flinders Street to Collins, Elizabeth to Swanston and incorporating Degraves Street, Flinders Lane and Centre Place.

Process

Eid undertook primary research and utilised secondary resources predominantly from the State Library of Victoria’s diverse and extensive collections. In addition Eid embarked on field research alongside Banham, walking the block countless times to identify sites of interest and the best vantage points for viewing.

Outcome

The stories were documented into a free program (37,000 copies) and distributed as a supplement to the State of Design festival catalogue.

Character is an initiative of the Communication Design Program at RMIT University.
The fifth in the Character series, Characters & Spaces is a partnership with the State of Design Festival 2009.

Character
Letterbox

Habitat exhibition

admin — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:56:37 +0000

10 October – 1 November 2008
Habitat exhibition
Utopian Slumps
25 Easey Street
Collingwood, Melbourne
Australia

Curator: Laurence Billiet

Habitat features three female artists, Laurence Billiet, Christine Eid and Georgia Metaxas, whose work explores themes of identity, home and belonging. With a common and unapologetic focus on ordinary, everyday objects the artists aim to challenge their audience’s perception of the world that surrounds us and provide a commentary on the relationship between people/objects and their habitat.

Research

As part of Christine Eid’s ongoing exploration into aspects of the Victorian taxi industry, she tried to source statistics on workplace violence on taxi drivers. After contacting various stakeholders from the Victorian Taxi Directorate, Victorian Taxi Association, Victorian Taxi Drivers Association, Police Victoria, Work Safe Victoria, Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute of Criminology, Eid discovered that no such data is collected.

The Victorian Taxi Directorate, who regulate the taxi industry on behalf of the State Government, were the exception. They record statistics of incidents when footage from internal taxi security cameras has been downloaded. This only occurs where a complaint has been made to Victoria Police and they deem it serious enough to request such a download. They are the only assaults recorded and do not specify the types of assaults.

Process

The absence of statistics inspired Eid’s Rank (2008) installation and sculpture series. Vinyl graphs without data were adhered to the taxi dome shells. The domes were recontextualised into vessels housing jade pot plants that not only referenced the fragility of the drivers’ lives, but also their hopes, aspirations and an optimistic opportunity for renewal and change.

Outcome

Eid’s work Rank (2008), a series of taxi dome shells complete with graphs denoting workplace violence devoid of statistics, force us to consider the perilous habitat of taxi drivers and encourage us to question why this data is not collected. While taxis are commonly seen as a commodity or transportation device Eid’s work is a reminder that these drivers are individuals and that their presence transforms an impersonal conduit into a shared moment between strangers. The dome shells were turned upside down filled with jade pot plants and suspended from the gallery ceiling, further domesticating the objects whilst lending them new life.

Utopian Slumps
Laurence Billiet
Georgia Metaxas

Photographer: Andrew Lloyd

Arab Image Foundation residency

admin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:09:00 +0000

August 2008
Arab Image Foundation
Starco Center
Ain Mriesse, Beirut
Lebanon

Christine Eid researches photography collections at the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut.

Research

Christine Eid undertook a research residency with the Arab Image Foundation (FAI) in Beirut. The FAI is a non-profit organisation established in Lebanon in 1996. They aim to preserve and promote the photographic heritage of the Middle East and North Africa and have over 85,000 photographs in their collections dating between the 1860s to the 1970s. Eid was researching the role of emigration and tourism on the genre of funeral photography in Lebanon, with particular reference to the FAI’s collections. She also interviewed Mohsen Yammine, one of Lebanon’s major private photography collectors.

Arab Image Foundation

..né. à Beyrouth Film Festival

admin — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:05:17 +0000

21 – 26 August 2008
7th Edition of the Lebanese Film Festival
Centre Empire Sofil
Achrafieh, Beirut
Lebanon

Christine Eid’s short digital film ‘Transit’ will premiere in Lebanon at the ..né. à Beyrouth Lebanese Film Festival. The festival aims to promote Lebanese cinema locally and internationally as well as encouraging the Lebanese film-making industry. It is an independently organised free event that hosts a programme of film and video work directed by Lebanese cinematographers or from Lebanese origin, providing a panorama of local cinematographic production.

..né. à Beyrouth