Help Paul to Preserve the ARI REMIX PROJECT 2025-26

Photo: Adjusting Margins, wall-based and window-based installation exhibition collaboration exploring posters as types of community archives with Paul Andrew and Joanna Kambourian. Outer Space 2022. Pictured here are [l-r] Outer Space Director Georgia Heywood and artist community facilitator Paul Andrew in conversation about the need to grow and preserve artist-run cultural heritage, and through collaborative memory work [i.e. active archival work] transmit 'stories so far'. Photo by Louis Lim.

Hello, Happy May 2025

I hope this mid year email finds you well !

I'm Paul Andrew, a media artist, zinester and community facilitator.

Thanks again for kindly helping me to start, expand, nuance, and preserve the ARI Remix Project in 2011, a 'living archives' conceptualised as an expanding internet artwork: http://ariremix.com.au .

We are now 15 years strong and I am truly grateful for your enduring support, participation and interest. Queensland/Australian artist-run initiatives are essential cultural organisations, and their cultural heritage has enduring relevance. The aim of ARI Remix is to scope and explore increased potential for 'at risk' ARI primary resources as a type of 21st Century community archives.

I am also truly grateful for your help with and donations towards our ongoing fundraising campaign accessed here [2019-2026].

Mostly the work performed with ARI Remix activity is voluntary, a labour of love. It is shaped and informed by ongoing work inside Queensland/Australian ARIs since 1984. The funds we raise each year are critical to help offset ongoing digital IT infrastucture needs, domain hosting and tech support expenditure. Thanks everyone who kindly helped in preceding years. No donation is too small.

This current EOFY 2025 fundraising opportunity aims to raise the next $3000 needed for ongoing diigital infrastructure costs towards all May 2025 to January 2026 activity. We are currently working without arts funding in an increasingly limited and competitive arts funding climate. Typically, archival art initiatives are not a priority with mainstream arts funding remits.

We are slowly edging closer to the GoFundMe fundraiser's overall and newly updated $12, 000 target. Generally-speaking, it costs $3000 per year for varied web development, web optimisation and basic software needs, WP plugins, insurances and updates. Addtionally in 2025, we are now midway through a major and necessary migration update to optimise the internet artwork [ via WordPress WP ] thanks to new community partner AO Digital.

For me, ARI REMIX is proving to be a most joyful, and challenging co-creative, experimental art and social practice experience. I am so truly grateful for the collective effort and enthusiasm to grow, deliver and preserve this archival activity across six intensive project stages [2011-2026].

Archives aren't often in the hands of artist-run communities. My aim with ARI REMIX is to offer a lofi DIY example of how to conceptualise, generate and develop self-sustaining models. This work is novel and unprecedented in the Australian arts canon. In time, I hope it can provide inspiration for a more formal digital archiving framework which encompasses independent arts-based organisations including ARIs, artist collectives, artist groupings and arts-based queer trans LGBTQIA+ spaces.

Exciting News! This winter we are also delighted to significantly broaden our creative scope and vision - one step further - as we present a group exhibition as part of a new 'ARIs Revisited' exhibition series.

Hopefully this expanded archival art initiative approach will help attract more funds to preserve, advocate and amplify ARI Remix and and ongoing work by the ARI Remix Collective. Specifically, to place added emphasis on the immense value of ARI community heritage into the future. Digitally activating lost histories, marginalised narratives, and 'at risk' artists' ephemera as 'stories so far' is foundational to all ARI Remix memory work.

Here is a brief description of the exhibition at Redland Art Gallery in Cleveland in case it is of interest;

Headlands Revisited

SUNDAY 15 JUNE –

TUESDAY 26 AUGUST 2025

Opening Event – Sunday 15 June 12-2pm

Roundtable Readings – Sunday 22 June 12-1.30pm

An exhibition to celebrate the joyful history, colourful characters, spirited activity and creative significance of the Headlands Chalet, located on Minjerribah/Stradbroke Island from 1989 – 2015. Headlands, as it was affectionately known, was an oasis for arts communities, artist-run initiatives [ARIs] and queer arts collectives.

Built in 1935, the Headlands Chalet was a modest 13 cabin communal complex, located on Mooloomba Drive, Point Lookout. From humble beginnings, it evolved to become a popular and affordable getaway retreat and studio space for artists.

Marshall Malouf [1952- 2015], host, community facilitator and erstwhile artist transformed this hillside artists’ retreat overlooking the Pacific Ocean into a living artwork during his 26-year custodianship.

This group exhibition is envisioned as a form of collaborative reminiscence where memory, artworks and overlapping histories co-occur. Included in this exhibition are Paul Andrew, Di Ball, Leonard Brown, Jo Fay Duncan, Easton Pearson (Pamela Easton and Lydia Pearson), Lisa Iselin, Colin Millar, Simon McLean, Nick Olsen, Rosslynd Piggott, Barbara Piscitelli, Ian Quiller Orchardson, Luke Roberts and Bronwyn Searle, but a few of the many artists who frequented this haven of culture.

Marshall Malouf passed away in 2015 and this exhibition is a fitting tribute to his vital contribution to the diversity, eloquence and queerness of creative expression in Queensland and Australian artist communities.

Visitors are invited to contribute their personal stories and memories to a timeline, to continue to capture the creative expression of Marshall’s legacy.

https://artgallery.redland.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/exhibitions-2025/headlands-revisited/

Thank you again for your continuing support in 2025. I am truly grateful.

Warm and Healthy Autumn Winter Wishes Ahoy,

Paul Andrew