Lynda Roberts

I am a PhD candidate at Deakin University. My research investigates how Melbourne’s public sphere can support experimental temporary artistic practices and explores the shifts in production that artists as well as local authorities need to negotiate within this increasingly contested field.

The PhD will entail developing and testing insitu a series of guides for artists, educators and commissioners working with and within civic systems. These will draw from my embodied knowledge of working in the field as an artist, tactically responding to the public realm, and as an operator working strategically within bureaucratic systems.

Operating out of a mobile public office, three recently completed projects at the City of Melbourne will be explored – the Melbourne Public Art Framework 2014-17, the inaugural Biennial Lab at Queen Victoria Market and Test Sites, a program that encouraged artists to use the city as their studio. The research will entail retrospective analysis on how these projects were informed by my creative practice Public Assembly; my involvement in cross-disciplinary labs, such as Situate and Splendid; along with teaching at RMIT University, embedding creative practitioners insitu within hothouse ‘charrette’ conditions to develop new ideas.

A series of performance nodes will articulate these findings and situate them within a community of practice, accompanied by a suite of publications, each with their own vocabulary, reflecting the different processes and guises that I play.

Interests: public art, public realm, public policy, creative cities, practice-led research