Exhibiting artist Emil Cañita discusses their new work Poz Cocksucking Tranny Exposed (2025) with Con Gerakaris, Curatorial Program Manager, 4A.

4A TALKS: Emil Cañita is a public program for Antivenom: Year of the Snake, part of 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Arts' Lunar New Year 2025 artistic program.

Curated and produced by Platform Asia, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney and Dreamy Place.

Supported by Art Fund, Arts Council England, Creative Australia, Diversity Art Forum, People’s Postcode Trust and The Chalk Cliff Trust. Special thanks to arebyte Gallery and Chinabot.

Speakers:

• Elsewhere in India (Artists: Murthovic and Thiruda)
• Amrita Dhallu (Assistant Curator, International Art at Tate)
• Kinnari Saraiya (Curator, Somerset House & Guest Curator, arebyte Gallery)
• Morgan Sully, aka Memeshift (Artist, Musician & Curator, Latent Sonorities)
• Gary Zhexi Zhang (Artist)

Chair & Moderator: Michelle Rocha (Head of Touring, Factory International)

For this episode of 4A Talks, we speak with Sophia Cai, the curator of our ongoing exhibition, A Soft Touch, which brings together ten contemporary Australian artists and explores empowerment and dissent through the art of textile.

"There's nothing wrong in being a soft person," she says as she shares why she chose the name, what defines 'a soft touch' and why she doesn't really stop thinking about her curations - even if the exhibition closes.

Tune in!

Artist and designer Evi O talks with Con Gerakaris (4A, Curatorial Program Manager) about her recent commissioned public artwork A Pair of Marbled Cone Snails Races to Chinatown for the Special Braised Eggplant. They discuss design as art, food tourism, the ongoing gentrification of Sydney's Chinatown and public art.

Artist Rel Pham discusses his new commissioned exhibition Cache with curator Con Gerakaris (4A, Curatorial Program Manager). Rel discusses the range of influences which informed his new work including PC operations, Big Data, memory, the I-Ching and more.

Sydney-based new media collective Origin discuss their newly commissioned artwork Origin (Marle). Created for 4A Digital 2022, Origin (Marle) is a collaborative project from Jordan East, Jane Fan, Callum Howard, Pat Younis and Alvin Ruiyuan Zhong and a continuation of their digitally-focused practice as Origin. Origin discuss with project curator Con Gerakaris (4A, Curatorial Program Manager) their influences and process in creating this interlinked artwork. Covering creative code, video and sound, Origin explore emerging AI technology including ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion, Dall-E and ImageNet as tools used in the artistic process.

Experience Origin (Marle) on 4A Digital here

Recorded Sunday 8 January 2023.
Produced by 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art.
This project is supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund.

To mark the closing weekend of ‘For us sinners’, 4A hosted an in-conversation between artist Marikit Santiago and Professor Anna Cristina Pertierra (Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at University of Technology Sydney) on Saturday 14 May, 2pm. Anna and Marikit discussed the representation of Filipina-Australians in daily social, political and cultural life, and how family, motherhood and religion have influenced their personal identities and professional careers.