Essay Club goes to the Sunshine Coast! Join us for Essay Club 5 with Amanda Bennetts, hosted offsite by our friends at UniSC Art Gallery, Sippy Downs.

Together with IMA’s Manager Public Programs and Education Madeline Brewer, Bennetts will discuss Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophical essay on surviving his heart transplant, ‘L’Intrus’ (The Intruder) (2000). Nancy writes from within the experience of illness, describing the temporality, strangeness, and fragmentation that accompanied his major medical procedure. He questions what it means to be ‘saved’ by something the body resists, reflects on medical management, and asks what is at stake in the deferral of death. Bennetts will discuss the text in context to her exhibition Fragmented, Divided—Yet Whole, which brings together recent work that uses time as both material and metric for understanding the body.

From 4pm to 6pm, prior to the event, UniSC Art Gallery will screen Claire Denis’s  L’Intrus (The Intruder) (2004). Loosely inspired by Nancy’s essay, it follows a man traversing geographic, familial, and bodily borders in search of his estranged son and a new heart. Less an adaptation than a conceptual parallel, Denis’s film shares Nancy’s preoccupation with self-alienation and the cost of survival.

Join us for pizza and cold drinks. Everyone is welcome, but space is limited. Registration is essential. Participants are encouraged to read the text and watch the film. We will email you the essay upon registration. If you are unable to attend the screening, details on how to access the film will be sent as well. If you have any questions, please contact madeline@ima.org.au.

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Reading group, meets salon, meets networking drinks. Join us at the IMA for Essay Club. Whether you’re a university student, emerging arts worker, artist, or someone who thinks critically about culture, there’s space at the table. Each session, our well-read friends from the neighbourhood will select a text that’s shaping their ideas, conversations, and approaches to contemporary art practice. We dig into the ideas together, with a focus on how global conversations might translate locally.

Essay Club hosts for 2026 include Nicholas Aloisio-Shearer (Institute of Modern Art), Holly Anderson (artist), Madeline Brewer (Institute of Modern Art), Elena Dias-Jayasinha (Museum of Brisbane), Holly Eddington (Milani Gallery), Jocelyn Flynn (UQ Art Museum), Tay Haggarty (Outer Space), Llewellyn Millhouse (Wreckers Artspace), and Holly Riding (State Library of Queensland).