Program

FINAL EXHIBITIONS FOR 2008


Brooklyn Bags


Photography by Catherine Gomersall

Opens 6pm THURSDAY 4 DECEMBER 2008
Continues until Sun 21 Dec
On the Ground Floor

Catherine Gomersall, Untitled from the series 'Brooklyn Bags', 2008, Inkjet Print, 60 x 90cm.

Currently in New York, Perth-based photographer and Edith Cowan University PhD candidate Catherine Gomersall brings her latest series of work to Melbourne in Brooklyn Bags.

The ‘plastic bag’ has not only become a controversial cultural artifact, it has come to symbolise a predicament of modern living. Photographers around the world have documented the plastic bag in public spaces expressing curiosity and concern over their use and management. The plastic bag appears as an accessory to the famous Tiananmen Square protest of 1989. In 2004 a rubbish bag as an art exhibit made headlines and is binned by a cleaner at the Tate Gallery in Britain. Petitions litter the streets and internet forum sites by local and national activists encouraging the public to “Ban the Bag”. The question remains has the “Green Bag” actually altered the cultural phenomenon of the bag?

Gomersall's new exhibition questions these views through a series of compelling and bold photographic prints entitled ‘Brooklyn Bags’. Taken on the streets of Brooklyn, New York, earlier this year, she is currently on her 2nd photographic expedition there and will be flying in directly for this exhibition at Guildford Lane Gallery.

www.catherinegomersall.com



Salt and the Dress

An Installation by Lesley Dickman

Opens 6pm THURSDAY 4 DECEMBER 2008
Continues until Sun 21 Dec
On the Ground Floor


Salt and the Dress
raises concerns about rising water levels and desalination. Established painter Lesley Dickman extends her art practice with this installation, continuing her interest in textural qualities with the use of white muslin and salt. A soft aesthetic initially disguises elements of discomfort in Salt and the Dress, like a chameleon it has its disguises...


Graduating with a degree in Fine Art from Monash University, Gembrook’s artist Lesley Dickman has since developed a career spanning graphic design, painting, performance and teaching. Exhibiting since 1981 Dickman’s style and content has evolved to include textiles and installation media successfully pushing her theories beyond the canvas.

THE WEDNESDAY PROJECT - ONGOING


THE
WEDNESDAY
PROJECT


A FREE Weekly Event


Doors open 6.30pm with drinks on the ground floor, Performance begins 7pm on the 2nd floor. Free Entry!

INTWINED - Session #2
Curated by Tom Hall featuring

  • Bonnie Mercer (Grey Daturas)
  • Robin Fox (Yokohama Triennale, Melbourne Festival, Sounds Outback Festival in WA)
  • Ben Byrne


The Wednesday Project is a dynamic and innovative creative forum which roams the spaces of Guildford Lane Gallery every Wednesday night. Fostering ideas of collaboration and interaction, The Wednesday Project exists as a series of artist-run or curated sessions, asking artists to push the boundaries of genre and medium and allowing the audience to witness and interact with the process over a period of time. Nights can involve anything from insight or commentary into the artistic process, performance, soundscapes, workshops, critical talks or discussions, screenings and beyond. The Wednesday Project provides a vibrant and diverse take on art and how the audience views it, as well as how the artists themselves create it.

Wednesday, November 26 2008 marks the very first Wednesday Project event. Curated by Brisbane Media Artist Tom Hall, the opening project spans three Wednesdays in a row and features a huge line-up of visual, media, sound and performance artists such as Robin Fox (Yokohama Triennale, Melbourne Festival and Sounds Outback festival in WA.), Bonnie Mercer of the Grey Daturas and Tom Hall himself (Nasic Square Gallery, Open Frame Festival, Otherfilm Festival, Perth International Arts Festival). Over three weeks, extreme adventurers who combine themes of improvisation, experimentation, collaboration, science, contemporary theatre and other visceral elements drawn from everyday music, life, culture and art. These artists place an importance on new discoveries and will challenge you to see, hear and exist within art in an entirely different way.

Thanks to sponsor Melaleuca Grove Wines for making this session delicious and possible!


FUTURE PROJECT LINE-UPS:

Session #3 – Dec 10
  • Daniel Jenatsch
  • Christina Tester
  • Make Up Sex (Sophie Brous and Tarquin Manek)
  • Scot Cotterell (Hobert)
Dec 17 – NEW PROJECT – Session #1
  • Rod Cooper, Vessel Project

RECENT EXHIBITIONS


Parting Line

Bachelor of Design (Industrial Design), GRADUATE EXHIBITION (BA and Honours), RMIT University

SUNDAY 23 - SUNDAY 30 NOVEMBER
On the Ground & 1st Floors


Parting Line is the graduating exhibition of RMIT's Industrial Design fourth year 2008. This years graduating year is made up of 57 students all working under the discipline of Industrial Design, yet endeavoring on a range of very diverse projects. Parting Line will showcase each students major project from 2008. The projects showcased in Parting Line include automotive, bicycle, home product, furniture, lighting, sustainable, interactive, system and conceptual design. View the exhibition website here.

Sponsored by Mountain Goat Beer


Self.X.Posure
Natalie Taylor

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 2 - SUNDAY NOVEMBER 30
On the 2nd Floor

Image: Natalie Taylor, Passion Pop XXX, Oil on Canvas, 1130 x 1135 cm, 2008.

There are over a dozen meanings associated with X; it is an unknown, an influence, a mystery, a kiss, a generation, an agent, an Icon, to sign here, to multiply, to censor, to negate, to exit, as an unnamed, a verb transition and the number 10 to name a few. Natalie Taylor is a Brisbane based artist whose current practice focuses on the interaction of the primary symbol X within her life experiences. Self.X.Posure represents Taylor's concepts and emotions whilst delving into family loves, miss-adventures and the destruction of the significant other, which is not named or identified. Taylor has drawn inspiration for this exhibition from Cy Twombly and Antonio Tapies, whose works were influential in the way the human mind questions the powerful demand of a mark and how it is applied metonymically.

Click here to read a review of Natalie Taylor's exhibition by Trevor Gager (You need to be a member of ArtsHub).



Without Solid Walls

Imagination Can Travel

Communication Design (Honours), The Works Design Consultancy, Graduate Exhibition

4 - 9pm WEDNESDAY 19 NOVEMBER
Also open 12 - 9pm Thursday 20th
On the Ground & 1st Floors

This years work by The Works will be showcased in a thematic environment and features commercial projects, research projects and interactive installations. We invite the viewer to use their imagination.

Amy Borrell Karen Chan Belinda Chen Marilyn de Castro Luci Everett Sally Fowler Johann Gasperz Alexandra Hall Victor Ivanov Monica Laskowski Tamarin Morley Erin Morris Mark Ng Clare Sheldon-Williams Kate Simos


Four Flights
Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art), DRAWING COURSE GRADUATE EXHIBITION (BA and Honors), RMIT University

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 5 - SUNDAY NOVEMBER 16
On the Ground & 1st Floors

Image: Mariam Janahi, Army of Mariam, Mixed media, 2008

PRISCILLA AMBROSINI HELEN ANDRADE BOE-LIN BASTIAN REBECCA BLADEN CHRISTOPHER BOND HANNAH DUNLOP SARAH DUYSHART ELISE GRAYMORE GINNY SARGENT BONNIE HANLON MARIAM JANAHI ELYSS MCCLEARY PETROS MILLER PAUL NORTHEY ALICE PARKER SOPHIE PERILLO ROBYN PRIDHAM JAMES RICHES JACQUILYNE SMITH CHLOE VALLANCE TERESA HOWIE YENA JUNG LEO ZYLBERBERG

Four Flights presents selected work from a wonderful cohort of graduating and Honours students from the 2008 RMIT University, Fine Arts.

The 23 artists in Four Flights have worked with veracity, courage and sensitivity alongside an awareness of the banality of uninspired practice. However they are also acutely aware that only through a depth of engagement within the ordinary will the extraordinary be accessible. Elusive as this is, and beyond prediction and prescription, this approach might be marked by accident, absurdity, catharsis, humour, exhaustive integrity, clairvoyant vision, or by simply being ‘in the zone’. As in a perspective drawing where the linear length is defined and finite but the trajectory is endless and infinite, Four Flights suggests both limitation and transcendence.


October Exhibitions


WITHOUT MONEY THERE IS NO LOVE
OCTOBER 2 -
NOVEMBER 2

Image: Annika Koops, Rose Coloured Masses, 2008.

ANDREW ATCHISON MARTIN BELL CHRISTOPHER-DAVID BRIL
KELLY DOLEY JEREMY DRAPE EXQUISITE FEATURES ROMY HOFFMAN
ANNIKA KOOPS HIDDE VAN SCHIE TAPE PROJECTS MICHELLE TRAN
CURATED BY VERONICA TELLO

Without Money There Is No Love deals with numerous facets of contemporary D.I.Y aesthetics and sensibilities in independent publications, sound art and the visual arts. By bringing to the fore various practices that to greater or lesser degrees blend lo-tech and high-tech strategies and aesthetics, W.M.T.I.N.L considers how such artists work and negotiate within or without art markets.



Sightings in Space
Elka Kerkhofs

OCTOBER 2 - NOVEMBER 2
ARTIST TALK SUNDAY 2ND NOV AT 2.30PM

Elka Kerkhofs, Belgian/Australian hybrid artist, works as a writer, director, animator, filmmaker, video, sound and lighting designer. Elka has a Masters in Visual Arts (Photography), a Diploma in Contemporary Music and in 2006 she finished her postgraduate studies in Animation at the Victorian College of the Arts during which she received the VCA merit scholarship, the Anthony Ganim PG award an d the EH Shepard animation award. Her animation ‘FILLED WITH WATER’ was highly commended in the Sydney Film Festival, Dendy Awards in the most innovative category, won the Best Production Award at the 2007 Sydney Mardi Gras Film Festival My Queer Career Competition and has won the Best Tertiary Animation in the 2007 EnhanceTV ATOM Awards in Melbourne. In 2007 it premiered at the New York GLBT Film Festival and the San Francisco GLBT Film Festival. Her 2006 animation, ‘INTO THE DEPTH OF THE GROOVE’ was a finalist at the Oneminutebelgianopen in Ghent in 2006 and the 1 Minute Film & Sound Awards in Leffingeleuren in 2007. She is currently finishing her Masters in Animation at the VCA, Melbourne University with her new film ‘Eye Lash’.



0 = 2: THE MIRROR & THE KNIFE
Alex Bradley

OCTOBER 2 - NOVEMBER 2


Is it imagination, or fact, discovered when nature is v iewed at a microscopic level? 0 = 2: The Mirror & The Knife, opens 6pm Thursday October 02, inviting you to take a ‘fantastic voyage’ into this question through the colourful, large-scale, artworks of photographer Alex Bradley.

Download Alex Bradley's Catalogue here:catalogue.pdf

PREVIOUS OPEN STUDIO ARTISTS

Tamar Dolev
2 OCTOBER 2 - NOVEMBER 2
ARTIST TALK SUNDAY 2ND NOV AT 2.30PM

Tamar Dolev's stencil artworks represent the body as being both beautiful and grotesque. In Tamar's month in the Open Studio Space she hopes to expand her artistic repertoire by creating an installation piece which deals with the body and how it can be pushed and shoved and disoriented. Tamar looks forward to this challenge.

Download a PDF of Tamar's Artist Talk here.
: ARTIST%20TALK-GLG-TAMAR.pdf

Please check out Tamar's website.


Elin Eriksen & Miles Brown - Until 28 September
SEPTEMBER 1 - 28
DRINKS & DISCUSSION SATURDAY 20TH SEPT, 4 - 6PM


Miles Brown, Open Artist Studio, Guildford Lane Gallery, September 2008

During their residency in the Open Artist Studio, Elin Eriksen and Miles Brown will work together to create a rich, experiential and immersive installation.

"The idea came from meeting a flat and seemingly endless cityscape such as Melbourne and wanting to create a tactile and animated installation that alludes to the experience of nature either as sheltering and concealing or unfamiliar and to be avoided, with the viewer having the choice of entering and engaging or keeping their distance." Elin Eriksen

"We're both artists from who work in fabric and sound installation, but come from opposite sides of the world (Tasmania, Norway). Both of our home towns are places where the wilderness is close at hand. We are creating the imaginary forest we can't find in the city, from industrial materials / castoffs, and found sounds - exploring a psychological space that is at once comforting and unsettling...familiar yet best kept at a distance from. Also we like black things. And forests." Miles Brown



2nd FLOOR STUDIO
Emily Hodge - Until 28 September

Emily Hodge is engaged in the development of a collaborative performance/art installation working with dancer Luke Hickmott and electronic musician Drew Bluetree. The project is inspired by the choreographic 'kinesphere' which Luke has begun to implement through a mentorship program with Melbourne dance artist, Carlee Mellow. The kinesphere is an imagined cube-like structure consisting of 27 points which hold a specific relationship to one another.

This system allows the dancer to be within their body and, via an imagined inhabiting of the cube, outside of their body simultaneously. As a visual artist Emily is investigating how she might also participate with her own constructed kinespheric system. She will implement her own 27-point system that engages with the idea of moving in relation to this imagined geometric entity. The emphasis is on finding new processes, games and ideas which can be fed back into the collaborative process in order to find their translations into sound and movement, and contributing to the collaborative aesthetic.

Emily is in her studio most days and welcomes visitors by appointment: 0435 148 510


Inaugural Opening of Guildford Lane Gallery, to be opened by Stelarc: Thursday July 31, 6pm.

EXHIBITIONS

01 August - 21 September
Anita Bacic: Outside In/Inside Out

“We don’t often realise that we learn how to see, how to look and how to interpret the world around us, often guided by an external hand or editor. In Outside In/Inside Out I have freed my work from the computer to display an unedited image without any editorial control. The only “editor” is natural light provided by the sun. Each viewer draws upon his or her own experiences in order to interpret what is happening; making this encounter similar yet different to others. The work allows a sense of self and a space for contemplation on the universality of the world outside as we share experiences despite our differences.”
Anita Bacic, 2008

Bacic is a Sydney based artist currently completing a Masters degree from the University of New South Wales. She has exhibited throughout Australia and overseas including Sao Paulo, Brazil and Istanbul, Turkey. Through the assistance of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant, AGNSW’s Dyson Bequest and the University of New South Wales, Bacic completed a residency at the Cité in Internationale des Arts (Paris) in 2007.


01 August - 28 September
Nina Sellars, Oblique: Images from Stelarc's Extra Ear Surgery


With the assistance of an Australia Council grant, Nina Sellars travelled to Los Angeles in 2006 to photograph the surgical construction of Stelarc's Extra Ear project. The experimental and internationally renowned artist Stelarc underwent surgery to have a left ear constructed on his left forearm. A miniature microphone was also embedded underneath the Extra Ear during surgery, allowing it to be wirelessly connected to the Internet via a Bluetooth transmitter. Sellars' artistic practice, which focuses on the physiology and phenomenology of the human body, profoundly intersects with Stelarc's own body-based practice.

Sellars lectures in Anatomical Drawing at Monash University, where she is currently completing her Masters of Fine Arts having received an Australian Postgraduate Award. Sellars’ MFA research investigates the idea that with the advent of new technologies to emanate, record and capture light, our perception of the anatomical body alters and a new body is imaged. The work explores how light determines what we see and experience in relation to the anatomical body. Sellars’ is also a trained Prosector: a dissector of cadavers for medical display, and her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2008 Sellars was an invited speaker at the Science Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin where she presented the lecture ‘Anatomy and Light’.
Download Nina Sellars' catalogue.

Nina Sellars, Extra Ear Portrait, 2006

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.


01 August - 28 September
Elizabeth Delfs and Robyn Beeche: Body, Provocation



For Body, Provocation, Robyn Beeche and Elizabeth Delfs worked with dancers and photography - or the ephemeral and documentation - to combine two diverse and intriguing practices. Their images reflect their shared interest in the body, which they perceive to be a site of creation and deconstruction, and a means to make alternative and "anti-fashion" statements. In their photographs, the dancers exist in a space that oscillates between the organic and the inorganic, fervor and calm, and reveries and consciousness. The notions of beauty, sexuality, the surreal, provocation and the occult are some of the themes and ideas explored by the artists.

For 35 years, Beeche has focused on the intersections between art and fashion. Her work is theatrical and immersed in high fashion and art photography. Beeche is responsible for creating iconic images for fashion royalty such as Vivienne Westwood and Zhandra Rhodes. She is currently based in India where she documents festivals and Indian culture. These images were the focus of Krishna Love and Devotion, an exhibition held at the National Gallery of Victoria in early 2008.

Delfs teaches at the Curtin University of Technology and regularly exhibits her work in and around Perth. Delfs’ practice, which engages fashion and artificial environments, first gained recognition when she was selected to exhibit in Talente, an international exhibition held in Munich 2005, featuring outstanding emerging artists and craft practitioners.

Robyn Beeche and Elizabeth Delfs, Body, Provation Series, 2007


OPEN STUDIO

1 August - 28 August
Resident: Carrie McGrath

During her residency in the Open Artist Studio, Carrie McGrath will be preparing for her upcoming show at SEVENTH gallery, titled Lots. McGrath's work presents aesthetics and processes that are closely tied to urban redevelopment and gentrification. McGrath's work is inspired by her recent travels in South America where she found herself nestled within hectic cities but attracted to spaces "where nothing was going on. Places such as vacant block and unused car parks." The artist states, "These spaces for me became a silent protest against ugly development." McGrath uses various materials to create large-scale installations that abstractly mirror such 'silent protests'.

McGrath's work will be showing at SEVENTH gallery, 155 Gertrude Street Fitzroy, from 12 August - 23 August. www.seventhgallery.org

Carrie McGrath, Untitled, 2005

Labels: