Preamble [1]
'Melbourne Now' was an art exhibition mounted by the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) in 2014. It took as its premise the idea that a city is significantly shaped by the artists, designers, architects, choreographers, intellectuals, and community groups that lived and worked in the midsts of this multi-cultural city. The aim was to explore how Melbourne's visual artists and creative practitioners contributed to the dynamic cultural identity of this city. The result was an exhibition that celebrates what was unique about Melbourne's art, design, and architectural collectives.
The intention of the exhibition was to encourage and inspire everyone to discover some of the best of Melbourne's culture. To help achieve this, family-friendly activities, dance and music performances, inspiring talks from creative practitioner's, city walks and ephemeral installations and events made up the public program.
This and other posts in this series concentrate on the participating artists, rather than on other features of the exhibition event such as the family-friendly commissions developed especially for children and young audiences that was aimed to encourage participatory learning for children and their families in general.
For your convenience I have listed below other posts on thie blogspot that features Melbourne Now exhibitions:
Melbourne Now - Part I
Melbourne Now - Part II
Melbourne Now - Part III
Melbourne Now - Part IV
Melbourne Now - Part V
Melbourne Now - Part VI
Melbourne Now - Part VII
Melbourne Now - Part VII [1]
Tama tk Favell
Contemporary printmaker Tama tk Favell works mainly in linocut and other forms of relief printing. The artist was born in Otepoti/Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and moved to Melbourne (Australia) in 2001. He studied printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) in 2010.
Favell's 'Pacific Transformer' series of linocuts (2009-2013) for 'Melbourne Now' explores and develops the idea that male spiritual identity can be expressed through iconographic tattooing, creating a cultural means of gender transition as an alternative and/or addition to Western medical models. His use of mulberry paper is a tribute to and continuation of the use of tapa cloth (beaten mulberry bark) at times of transition throughout the Pacific. This powerful body of work is an account of the negotiation and navigation required to live between worlds. It is about moving between forms, changing form, the integration of self and culture and being takatapui, queer/transgender in a culturally Pacific sense. Favell's ultimate vision is for his imagery to be applied to his skin.
Tama tk Favell, Pacific Transformer 3 (2009-2013).
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Australia).
Emily Floyd
Melbourne-born artist, Emily Floyd, holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne, Australia) and a Bachelor of Fine Art (Sculpture) from RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia). Since 2001 she has represented numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Bendigo Art Gallery; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, amongst others.
Floyd's prints and sculptures explore the history of pedagogical play, employing it as a framework for investigations into literature, typography, protest, public art and the legacy of modernism. Her work incorporates bold color and geometrical forms referencing early modernist movements and collectives such as De Stijl, the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism. Floyd's work in 'Melbourne Now, Students in dissent (2013)' is a collaborative screen-printing project with Steward Russell, Warren Taylor and students from Monash Art Design and Architecture. The project was generated through Floyd's research into the history and legacy of radical student organizations based at Monash University during the 1960s and 1970s. The group worked together to reproduce nine political posters from the archives of former Monash Labor Club activist, Ken Mansell.
E. Floyd, S. Russell, W. Taylor and students from Monash Art Design and Architecture: J. Aucutt, M. Coombs, J. Dixon, P. Failla, J. Gordon, B. Hosford, J. Hoskin, S. Liu, G. Munn, P. Sin, K. Soda, V. Taing, N. truong, L. Walker, and J. Williams, Students in Dissent (2013).
Juan Ford
In his work, Juan Ford often pursues themes of transformation and discord between man and nature. While best known for realist paintings of people, landscape, nature, light and shadow, in recent times Ford has branched out and created installations, incorporating photography. The artist lives in Melbourne (Australia) and graduated from RMIT University in 1998. He has exhibited extensively throughout Australia in solo and group shows, and has work in the National Gallery of Victoria's collection.
Separation, alignment and cohesion are three interrelated concepts applied by scientists in their attempt to understand the flocking behaviour of birds. For his 'Melbourne Now' commission for kids, 'You, me and the flock (2013),' Ford investigates how this behaviour is related to human beings by inviting viewers of all ages to add birds to a flock that inhabits a panoramic sky-scape. Each bird added changes the flock's shape and movement as it grows and becomes overpopulated, resulting in some birds breaking away to form another configuration. With this playful installation, Ford poses challenging questions about human behaviour, highlighting our interaction with precious natural habitats.
Juan Ford, 'You, me and the flock' (Detail, 2013).
Supported by Melbourne Now Champions - the Dewhurst family.
Louise Forthun
For the past three decades, Louise Forthun has worked the urban landscape to the point of abstraction. The artist uses stencil painting processes to pile layers of architectural representations on top of one another, enveloping the viewer in a hypnotic vision of the contemporary metropolis. Since she began exhibiting in Melbourne in the 1990s, Forthun has sustained an ongoing investigation into critical abstraction through her work. She describes herself as a visual artist who makes paintings that explore abstractation's objective as well as non-objective dimensions.
For 'Melbourne Now,' Forthun contributes one of her most ambitious works to date - a portrait of Melbourne entitled, 'Bright light (2011).' More than five meters in length, Forthun's representation of her home city interweaves details drawn from an aerial plan of Melbourne with more familiar representations of its landmarks to create an immersive spatial construction that echoes in the frenetic energy of its source.
Louise Forthun, Bright Light (2011).
Patrick Francis
Patrick Francis began exhibiting at Arts Project Australia, Melbourne, in 2009, when he was eighteen years old. Since then his work has been included in every Arts Project Annual Gala Exhibition and numerous group exhibitions, the most recent being 'Classic Albums,' 2012 and 2013, and 'At The Table,' 2013. In 2012 Francis was selected as one of Arts Project Australia's featured artists for Melbourne Art Fair, and was also awarded the 2012 Art & Australia Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award.
A prolific painter, Francis works primarily in acrylic on paper. His paintings draw from his personal experiences, from first-hand encounters with Melbourne to his knowledge of popular culture and art history. Using a bold color palette, Francis' paintings are refined, expressive representations of portraiture and still life. His work's subject matter ranges from well-known celebrities and icons - from Marilyn Monroe to the fifteenth century Italian Renaissance author, Balassare Castiglione - to observations of everyday life. Francis has also interrupted the work of iconic Australian painters, including Sidney Nolan's early Ned Kelly series.
Patrick Francis - Ballet Dancer, Laura (2012).
Marco Fusinato
Marco Fusinato is a Melbourne-based artist whose practice references the rhetoric of radical politics (its ambitions and failures), noise as music and the frameworks of conceptual art. Through wide ranging forms of work in gallery contexts, Fusinato foregrounds moments of disruption and impact in which lie the possibility of a shift in perception or change in the course of events. Most recently, his work was included in 'Soundongs: A Contemporary Score,' the first sound exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013). Fusinato also performs regularly in the international experimental music underground, manipulating the guitar to produce what would have been referred to as 'improvised noise-spit tsunamis.'
For 'Melbourne Now,' Fusinato presents 'Aetheric plexus (Broken X)' (2013), a dispersed sculpture comprising deconstructed stage equipment that is activated by the presence of the viewer, triggering a sensory onslaught with a resonating orphic haze. The work responds to the wider context of galleries, in the artist's word,'...changing from places of reflection to palaces of entertainment...' by turning the engulfed audience member into a spectacle.
Marco Fusinato, Aetheric Plexus (2009).
Note: Installation view (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia).
Commissioned for 'Melbourne Now,' from the support of Joan Clemenger, AM.
Reference:
[1] T. Ellwood, Director, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).
'Melbourne Now' was an art exhibition mounted by the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) in 2014. It took as its premise the idea that a city is significantly shaped by the artists, designers, architects, choreographers, intellectuals, and community groups that lived and worked in the midsts of this multi-cultural city. The aim was to explore how Melbourne's visual artists and creative practitioners contributed to the dynamic cultural identity of this city. The result was an exhibition that celebrates what was unique about Melbourne's art, design, and architectural collectives.
The intention of the exhibition was to encourage and inspire everyone to discover some of the best of Melbourne's culture. To help achieve this, family-friendly activities, dance and music performances, inspiring talks from creative practitioner's, city walks and ephemeral installations and events made up the public program.
This and other posts in this series concentrate on the participating artists, rather than on other features of the exhibition event such as the family-friendly commissions developed especially for children and young audiences that was aimed to encourage participatory learning for children and their families in general.
For your convenience I have listed below other posts on thie blogspot that features Melbourne Now exhibitions:
Melbourne Now - Part I
Melbourne Now - Part II
Melbourne Now - Part III
Melbourne Now - Part IV
Melbourne Now - Part V
Melbourne Now - Part VI
Melbourne Now - Part VII
Melbourne Now - Part VII [1]
Tama tk Favell
Contemporary printmaker Tama tk Favell works mainly in linocut and other forms of relief printing. The artist was born in Otepoti/Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and moved to Melbourne (Australia) in 2001. He studied printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) in 2010.
Favell's 'Pacific Transformer' series of linocuts (2009-2013) for 'Melbourne Now' explores and develops the idea that male spiritual identity can be expressed through iconographic tattooing, creating a cultural means of gender transition as an alternative and/or addition to Western medical models. His use of mulberry paper is a tribute to and continuation of the use of tapa cloth (beaten mulberry bark) at times of transition throughout the Pacific. This powerful body of work is an account of the negotiation and navigation required to live between worlds. It is about moving between forms, changing form, the integration of self and culture and being takatapui, queer/transgender in a culturally Pacific sense. Favell's ultimate vision is for his imagery to be applied to his skin.
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (Australia).
Emily Floyd
Melbourne-born artist, Emily Floyd, holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne, Australia) and a Bachelor of Fine Art (Sculpture) from RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia). Since 2001 she has represented numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Bendigo Art Gallery; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, amongst others.
Floyd's prints and sculptures explore the history of pedagogical play, employing it as a framework for investigations into literature, typography, protest, public art and the legacy of modernism. Her work incorporates bold color and geometrical forms referencing early modernist movements and collectives such as De Stijl, the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism. Floyd's work in 'Melbourne Now, Students in dissent (2013)' is a collaborative screen-printing project with Steward Russell, Warren Taylor and students from Monash Art Design and Architecture. The project was generated through Floyd's research into the history and legacy of radical student organizations based at Monash University during the 1960s and 1970s. The group worked together to reproduce nine political posters from the archives of former Monash Labor Club activist, Ken Mansell.
Juan Ford
In his work, Juan Ford often pursues themes of transformation and discord between man and nature. While best known for realist paintings of people, landscape, nature, light and shadow, in recent times Ford has branched out and created installations, incorporating photography. The artist lives in Melbourne (Australia) and graduated from RMIT University in 1998. He has exhibited extensively throughout Australia in solo and group shows, and has work in the National Gallery of Victoria's collection.
Separation, alignment and cohesion are three interrelated concepts applied by scientists in their attempt to understand the flocking behaviour of birds. For his 'Melbourne Now' commission for kids, 'You, me and the flock (2013),' Ford investigates how this behaviour is related to human beings by inviting viewers of all ages to add birds to a flock that inhabits a panoramic sky-scape. Each bird added changes the flock's shape and movement as it grows and becomes overpopulated, resulting in some birds breaking away to form another configuration. With this playful installation, Ford poses challenging questions about human behaviour, highlighting our interaction with precious natural habitats.
Supported by Melbourne Now Champions - the Dewhurst family.
Louise Forthun
For the past three decades, Louise Forthun has worked the urban landscape to the point of abstraction. The artist uses stencil painting processes to pile layers of architectural representations on top of one another, enveloping the viewer in a hypnotic vision of the contemporary metropolis. Since she began exhibiting in Melbourne in the 1990s, Forthun has sustained an ongoing investigation into critical abstraction through her work. She describes herself as a visual artist who makes paintings that explore abstractation's objective as well as non-objective dimensions.
For 'Melbourne Now,' Forthun contributes one of her most ambitious works to date - a portrait of Melbourne entitled, 'Bright light (2011).' More than five meters in length, Forthun's representation of her home city interweaves details drawn from an aerial plan of Melbourne with more familiar representations of its landmarks to create an immersive spatial construction that echoes in the frenetic energy of its source.
Patrick Francis
Patrick Francis began exhibiting at Arts Project Australia, Melbourne, in 2009, when he was eighteen years old. Since then his work has been included in every Arts Project Annual Gala Exhibition and numerous group exhibitions, the most recent being 'Classic Albums,' 2012 and 2013, and 'At The Table,' 2013. In 2012 Francis was selected as one of Arts Project Australia's featured artists for Melbourne Art Fair, and was also awarded the 2012 Art & Australia Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award.
A prolific painter, Francis works primarily in acrylic on paper. His paintings draw from his personal experiences, from first-hand encounters with Melbourne to his knowledge of popular culture and art history. Using a bold color palette, Francis' paintings are refined, expressive representations of portraiture and still life. His work's subject matter ranges from well-known celebrities and icons - from Marilyn Monroe to the fifteenth century Italian Renaissance author, Balassare Castiglione - to observations of everyday life. Francis has also interrupted the work of iconic Australian painters, including Sidney Nolan's early Ned Kelly series.
Marco Fusinato
Marco Fusinato is a Melbourne-based artist whose practice references the rhetoric of radical politics (its ambitions and failures), noise as music and the frameworks of conceptual art. Through wide ranging forms of work in gallery contexts, Fusinato foregrounds moments of disruption and impact in which lie the possibility of a shift in perception or change in the course of events. Most recently, his work was included in 'Soundongs: A Contemporary Score,' the first sound exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013). Fusinato also performs regularly in the international experimental music underground, manipulating the guitar to produce what would have been referred to as 'improvised noise-spit tsunamis.'
For 'Melbourne Now,' Fusinato presents 'Aetheric plexus (Broken X)' (2013), a dispersed sculpture comprising deconstructed stage equipment that is activated by the presence of the viewer, triggering a sensory onslaught with a resonating orphic haze. The work responds to the wider context of galleries, in the artist's word,'...changing from places of reflection to palaces of entertainment...' by turning the engulfed audience member into a spectacle.
Note: Installation view (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia).
Commissioned for 'Melbourne Now,' from the support of Joan Clemenger, AM.
Reference:
[1] T. Ellwood, Director, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).
