ALASKA PROJECTS

Walking through the deserted caverns of a ghostly car park towards a disused basement, you may feel a sense of unease. You may think it unlikely to end well. Often, you may be right. As of early October, however, there’s one car park in which you’d be dead wrong. Sydney’s newest Artist Run Initiative, Alaska Projects, will see the five by five metre mechanics’ office of the Kings Cross Car Park transformed into a modular white cube designed as an exhibition space. The unique artist space is the first in what will hopefully become a diverse series of transformations of hidden, forgotten or just plain avoided locations around Sydney into exhibition spaces. Alaska Projects’ The Car Park Project is a potpourri of some Australia’s most exciting emerging artists; featuring a huge swag of locals like Tom Polo, Samuel Hodge, Jess Olivieri, Phil James, Bridie Connell, Biljana Jancic, Chloe Hughes, as well as Nick Collerson, Sarah Contos, Sarah Rodigari, Rupert Reid, and Siouxzi Mernagh, the launch show represents a mere taster of what’s in store over their 2011/2012 season, as artists are encouraged to play with the unusual spaces, test out mediums outside their usual practice, break out of the white cube and into the stairwells, elevators and open spaces of the car park, and collaborate and experiment as a group. Let’s face it, if anyone is going to thrive in a dank, abandoned Kings Cross building, it’s going to be artists. Alaska Projects’ opens Lorem Ipsum: Opening Group Show 1 on October 5th, 6 – 8pm.

Oct 5-23, Alaska Projects, Kings Cross Car Park, 9A Elizabeth Bay Road, Elizabeth Bay