Melinda Rackham

(MENAFN- The Conversation) Adjunct Research Professor, UniSA Creative, University of South Australia, University of South Australia Profile Articles Activity

When the internet was young Melinda Rackham wove interactive tales of online intimacy and identity [1995], founding and producing the multidisciplinary -empyre- forum [2002-onwards] a vital critical platform for academics, artists, curators and writers. Melinda introduced audiences to diverse internet practices and emerging technologies as ACMI's 1st Networked Art curator [2003]; developed engaging Art+Science programs for the Royal Institution of Australia; and presented Dreamworlds: Australian Moving Image on massive public screens in China during the Beijing Olympics. She led ANAT through expansive experimental programs in sound and mobile art practice, and has participated as an artist, curator and academic at many Conferences, Biennales, Film Festivals and events such as Ars Electronica, Documenta and ISEA.

Melinda's prolific texts critique, explore and poetically intervene into the worlds of art, artists, feminisms, social justice, and environmental issues; winning awards for Writing in New Media at Adelaide Festival [2000] and the SALA National Art Writers Award [2018]. Recently Professor Rackham revisited the slimey low-res world of cyberfeminism for a series of essays commissioned as a pedagogical archive on VNS Matrix, Australia's global Cyber supergroup. Her 3rd book CoUNTess: Spoiling Illusions since 2008 [2021], is a timely exploration of embedded gender inequity in the artworld, co-authored with CoUNTess founder Elvis Richardson. Her earlier monograph Catherine Truman: Touching Distance [2106] examines the many facets of a jeweller's career from the visceral precision of sculptural form to working with medical researchers.

Rackham's Instagram based performative parodies of 30 contemporary Australian female artist's works, #remakemistresses [2020], scrutinises museological exclusion of women. Living on the traditional lands of the Kaurna people, Melinda is currently writing an intergenerational tale of art, attachment & adoption, and investigating NFTs.

• 2017–present Adjunct Research Professor, UniSA Creative
• 2009–2011 Adjunct Professor, RMIT (Media and Communications)
• 2005–2009 Director, Australian Network for Art and Tecnology
• 2003–2004 Networked Art Curator, ACMI Australian Centre for Moving Image

• 2004  UNSW, Art and Design, PhD (Virtual Worlds)
• 1997  University of Wollongong, MA (Womens Studies)
• 1989  UNSW, Art and Design, BA (Sculpture)

• 2021 Melinda Rackham, in Pandemic Exchange: How Artists Experience the COVID-19 Crisis - ed Josephine Bosma, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam
• 2020 Its Flattery Lies, in Force Fields: Art, Architecture and Audience , Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial (KCAT). Kyneton,
• 2019 Manifesto, in Ciberfeminismo: De VNS Matrix a Laboria Cuboniks - Ed Remedios Zafra and Teresa López-Pellisa, Holobionte Ediciones, Barcleona
• 2018 Intimacy of Strangers, in Imprint Vol. 53, No. 3, , Print Council of Australia, Melbourne
• 2017 ADOPTED, with co-authors Rebecca Johnston, Diana Dunning and Sofie Gregory, Identity Rites Press, Adelaide
• 2016 Catherine Truman: Touching Distance, Wakefield Press, Adelaide

• Guildhouse
• National Association for the Visual Arts

• Art History (190102)
• Feminist Theory (220306)
• Communication Technology And Digital Media Studies (200102)
• Virtual Reality And Related Simulation (080111)

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