What is The BOO?
The BOO’s growing list of contributors up to the Out of Office iteration at the Fitzroy Gardens Pavilion in 2023 include: Ambulance, Rushdi Anwar, Grace Sophie Barelier, Franca Barraclough, Parminder Kaur Bhandal, Parminder Kaur Bhandal and Jim Adams, Liz Bodey, BOOreaucrats (PB and BS), Peter Burke and Louise Lavarack, Nick Chilvers, Linda Choi, Dale Collier, Greg Creek, Desert Star Traders, Nick Devlin, Peter Drew, Jaye Early, Megan Evans, Oliver Eclipse, Carly Fischer, Carly Fischer and Sally McIntyre, Greg Giannis, Alex Gibson, Catherine Gomersall, Ceri Hann, Brigid Hansen, Richard Harding, Hootan Heydari, Alison Hittmann, Raafat Ishak, Dina Indrasafitri, Raafat Ishak and Tom Nicholson, Katayoun Javan, Alex Kelly, Lucy Stewart-Kenneth, Jeffrey Kessel, Livia Kneubühler, Nico Liengme, Nico Liengme and Laurie May, Sean Lowry, Chips Mackinolty, Mayatilli Marika, Wandjuk Marika OBE (c.1930-1987), Ramon Martinez-Mendoza, Sam Meekan, Amanda Morgan, Wendy Murray, Saffron Newey, Esther Nunn, Ruth O’Leary, Performprint – Joel Gailer and Jenny Hall, Patrick Pound, Maz Prescott, Projekt Symbiosis, Public Field Office – Linda Roberts and Ceri Hann, Rumen Rachev, Steven Rendall, Elvis Richardson, Anna Ridgway, Elissa Sadgrove, Katie Sfetkidis, Dianne Stokes, Scotty So, Sonia Symantas, Bianca Tainsh, Masato Takasaka, Julie Jat Taylor, Nat Thomas, Adele Varcoe, Julie Vinci, Nick Waddell, Ways and Means, Hazel Westbury, Elmedin Zunić.
While a core team of members necessarily drive various outcomes, The BOO operates as a spurious administrative entity that organises creative expressions which examine, interrogate and reflect the complex reality of Australian identity and attending notions of absolute cultural origin. With a growing network of participating contributors from across Australia and overseas, multiple gestures of visual art, performance and relational situations ask questions that are often taken for granted or assumed when considering received or inherited notions of national affiliation. The BOO works in the spirit of institutional bureaucracies, sometimes perplexingly, to highlight and examine nuanced issues of race, identity and ideology surrounding a contemporary nation-state and associated implications within a global context.