Caren Florance and Melinda Smith, Relaxed and Comfortable, 2025. Image courtesy of the artists.
Caren Florance and Melinda Smith
Gallery 3
Friday 3 October - Sunday 26 October
Opening Thursday 2 October 2025, 6pm-8pm
Corridors of Power is the first creative response to the serial release of John Howard’s Cabinet Papers by poet Melinda Smith and artist Caren Florance. The last of the Cabinet Papers are due in 2028. Elected in 1996, even before the first parliamentary sessions of Howard’s first term could officially begin, he was forced to respond to the Port Arthur shootings. In successive terms, he faced the 9/11 global emergency and the TAMPA Crisis and Children Overboard affair, with the panic occasioned by these events eventually evolving into his infamous ‘Pacific Solution’. Howard remained in power for three more ministries, and he remains the longest serving Prime Minister after Robert Menzies. The policy decisions of the Howard Years to 2007 led to the rise of local Neo Liberalism and continue to shape Australia today, including the current aged care system (only just now being overhauled) and the Liberal party's early resistance to action on climate change – as well as a number of myths and legends still circulating today. Of course he also brought in gun control… or did he?
Both artists would like to thank Creative Australia for its support of their ‘Found Poetry of the Howard Years’ project.
About the Artists
Caren Florance
Dr Caren Florance is a queer typographic artist and writer who lives and works on Djiringanj land (Bega, NSW). Her creative practice includes poetic and visual collaborations, exploring the overlaps of visual poetry, text art and artist books and utilising both digital and material processes, particularly handset letterpress. Caren’s work is collected by national and international institutions, mostly libraries.
Melinda Smith
Melinda Smith lives and writes on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country in the ACT. Her poetry career spans 24 years and 8 books, and she won the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry in 2014. She has taught in the Creative Writing program at the University of Canberra, is a former poetry editor of the Canberra Times, and former co-organiser of the 'That Poetry Thing' reading series. She and Caren are long-time ‘found text’ collaborators – this exhibition is the first outcome of a larger project called The Found Poetry of the Howard Years.