About


The Trans-Siberian Arts Centre (T-SAC) is Directed by artists jon hewitt + britt salt and is the inaugural project for the not for profit artist run initiative KITCHEN. Travelling widely with no fixed address, KITCHEN promotes a varying range of artist projects using a pop-up ethos.


From 26th April - 2nd May 2011, T-SAC will be presenting a series of free performances, exhibitions and new works by over 180 emerging international artists from Moscow to Beijing aboard the Trans-Siberian train. Following this program of events, britt + jon will be developing the outcomes of the T-SAC project at an artist residency at Red Gate Gallery in Beijing.

During the 6 day Trans-Siberian journey, T-SAC will hold three main events. The Open Call Postcard Exhibition involving international emerging artists from diverse cultural backgrounds, the New Works: Emerging Australian and UK Video artists exhibition, and Platform Performances. These exhibitions
will be presented to a broad range of local commuters and international travellers between Moscow and Beijing from T-SAC’s on board location, and will be free to view.

 
The Open Call Postcard Exhibition includes over 150 young and emerging artists from a variety of cultural and artistic backgrounds, many of whom are exhibiting internationally for the first time.  

Left: Chloe Lelliott  "Silence Between White Walls Series" from the Open Call Postcard Exhibition.


From the humorous to the poignant, the exhibition New Works: Videos by Emerging Australian and UK Artists offers an insight into the works of 8 emerging artists who base their practices in diverse locations around the world. 



Curated in collaboration with Danae Valenza (AUS), the Platform Performances are a series of works by 4 young and emerging Australian artists which will be re-created and performed at the station platforms where the T-SAC Trans-Siberian train stops over the 6 day journey. These simple action performances will welcome the participation of fellow passengers and aim to integrate into the everyday environments along the train route, providing a curious and absurd aspect to the public realms of the different train platforms. 


Left: Danae Valenza "Handshake" from the Platform Performance series.

The T-SAC project asks ‘What do art centres do?’ or more so, ‘What can art centres do? The format of a travelling art space promotes the importance of linking a variety of urban city spaces around the world and in turn, also creates the opportunity for these spaces to be linked with rural environments; a non-discriminate approach to promoting artists and ideas. It is within this format that we at KITCHEN are exploring how we can encourage young and emerging artists in new exciting ways. Our aim is to provide international opportunities and alternative methods of presenting artist projects which offers the potential to expose emerging artists to new skills, experimentation, professional networks and wider audiences.