Note: Registrations open 10am Friday 31 July 2026. Everyone is welcome but space is limited—prompt registration is essential.
Join us at the IMA for Essay Club no. 7 with Elena Dias-Jayasinha. Together we’ll discuss ‘Strange and Difficult Fruit’ an essay by Joella Kiu, published in Tastes of Justice: The Aesthetics and Politics of Food-Art Practices in Asia and Australia (2025). The text discusses how durian and other southeast Asian fruits act as markers of time and ecology in contemporary art. For eager readers, an additional essay ‘The Sensory and the Social: Food Memory, and Community Engagement in Aftertaste‘ by Megan R. Fizell will also be distributed to generate complementary discussion.
Elena Dias-Jayasinha is a curator whose practice focuses on contemporary Asian art and its intersections in Australia and amongst local communities. Elena will speak to her work as a curator, the ideas of labour and migration raised in the text, and key artworks mentioned by Tiyan Baker, Nathan Beard, Khairullah Rahim, and Heider Ismail (thesupersystem).
Join us for snacks, drinks and a chat. The essays will be emailed upon registration.
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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 arts practice. We dig into the ideas together, with a focus on how global conversations might translate locally.
Your Essay Club hosts for 2026 include Nicholas Aloisio-Shearer (Institute of Modern Art), Holly Anderson (Artist), Amanda Bennetts (Artist), Madeline Brewer (Institute of Modern Art), Elena Dias-Jayasinha (Queensland Art Gallery), Holly Eddington (Milani Gallery), Jocelyn Flynn (UQ Art Museum), Tay Haggarty (Outer Space), Llewellyn Millhouse (Wreckers Artspace), and Holly Riding (State Library of Queensland).
