Preamble [1]
'Melbourne Now' was an art exhibition mounted by the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) in 2014. It takes as its premise the idea that a city is significantly shaped by the artists, designers, architects, choreographers, intellectuals and community groups that live and work in its midsts. The aim is to explore how Melbourne's visual artists and creative practitioners contribute to the dynamic cultural identity of this city. The result is an exhibition that celebrates what is unique about Melbourne's art, design, and architecture communities.
The intention of this exhibition is 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 (e.g., family-friendly commissions developed especially for children and young audiences that aimed to encourage participatory learning for kids and families etc.)
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 V [1]
Contemporary Jewellery
Along with Munich, Amsterdam and other cities, Melbourne (Australia) is recognized as a leading centre for the production of contemporary jewellery. Established training courses have contributed to this pre-eminence, but the community of local jewellers also includes those who are largely self-taught or whose work has emerged as a result of training in other creative fields. In addition, there are makers whose practice has evolved out of millennia-old cultural traditions, and others who trained overseas and have introduced new ways of working to the local scene.
This diversity of backgrounds among the jewellers represented in 'Melbourne Now' is mirrored by the variety of their technical, material and conceptual approaches to making jewellery. Necklaces, bracelets, rings and brooches of precious and semi-precious metals sit alongside others made of resin, porcelain and recycled materials. In this personal and dynamic jewellery merging craft, design, tradition and innovation, the intimate connexion between maker and object intersects with that which develops between object and wearer. Melbourne architecture firm, Muir Mendes, was commissioned to design the contemporary jewellery project for 'Melbourne Now.'
Contemporary jewellery project for 'Melbourne Now.'
Robert Baines, Rosanne Batley, Nicholas Bastin, Bin Dixon-Ward, Mark Edgoose, Maureen Faye-Chauhan, Stephen Gallagher, Allona Goren, Jo Hawley, Kirsten Haydon, Marian Hosking, Carlier Makigawa, Sally Marsland, Vicki Mason, David Neale, Tiffany Parbs, Nicole Polentas, Phoebe Porter, Emma Price, Lousje Skala, Blanche Tiden, Meredith Turnball, Manon van Kouswijk.
Daniel Crooks
New Zealand born, Daniel Crooks has lived and worked in Melbourne (Australia) for more than twenty years. A multi-disciplinary artist, Crooks is well known for his arresting video works in which he masterfully splices and rearranges once-familiar environments into undulating cacophonies of movement. Demonstrating a complex awareness of motion, control, physics, design and mathematical code, Crooks' work elevates time into physical, malleable dimension and challenges our understanding of it as a linear construct.
Commissioned for 'Melbourne Now', Crooks' most recent video work focuses his 'time-splice' treatment on the city's famous laneways. As the camera traces a direct, Hamiltonian pathway through these lanes, familiar surroundings are captured in seamless temporal shifts. Cobblestones, signs, concrete, street art, shadows and people are gracefully panned, stretched and distorted across our vision, swept up in what the artist describes as a 'dance of energy.' Exposing the underlying kinetic rhythm of all we see, Crooks' work highlights each movement once, gloriously, before moving on, always forward, transforming Melbourne's gritty and often inhospitable laneways into hypnotic and alluring sites.
A Garden of Parallel Paths - Still shot (2012).
Note: this commisioned work for Melbourne Now was supported by Julie, Michael and Silvia Kantor.
Georgina Cue
Georgina Cue is known for her diverse practice encompassing large-scale installations which combine embroidery with motifs of film noir and architectural space. Since 2007 she has exhibited regularly in Mebourne (Australia), where she lives and works.
The 'Aleph' (2010) is a large installation of embroidery on tapestry canvas that uses trompe l'oeil to create the sense of entering a room. Heavy, patterned drapery and carpets create an atmosphere of time past, and the subdued palette and dark shadows evoke the mystery and suspense of film noir. The work was first shown in an exhibition in Melbourne titled, 'Indicium,' meaning indication or sign in which the artist re-interpreted early twentieth century police photographs of New York crime scenes in embroidery, exploring how mystery and drama imbue everyday objects in these locations. While the melodrama and passion of the crime is absent once the body is removed, the space resonates with the memory of the event, like a stage set after a performance.
The Aleph (2010). National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).
Juan Davila
Juan Davila was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1946, and migrated to Melbourne in 1974. In drawing upon a striking array of historical art and cultural references - religious, modernist and avant-garde art, Latin American folk art traditions, pornographic and pop-cultural motifs and postcolonial and psychoanalytical discourse - Davila has been a leading protagonist in the development of critical form of post-conceptual painting since the late 1970s, and continues to be at the forefront of cultural and political critique in contemporary art internationally.
More recently, Davila has turned to the genres of landscape and historical painting, as well as portraiture and urban forms, to questtion the sweep of modernity and colonisation, the rapaciousness of late capitalism, and environmental degradation. Recent paintings - such as 'After Image, Ecran' and 'After Image, Kreon,' both 2013 - continue to explore indifferent relations between Indigenous, European and migrant communities. In the symbolic and increasingly spectacular forms of advertising and publicity in today's media, Davila identifies a new form of colonisation: of subjectivity itself. With technical virtuosity, his paintings achieve monumental significance - encapsulating beauty and emotion, while invoking society's intolerance of non-commercial enjoyment or desire.
After Image, Kreon (2013).
Christopher Day
True to the origins of documentary photography, East Melbourne-born photographer, Christopher Day works with everyday objects; his unique use of imagery and choice of subjects, however, turn the genre on its head. Self-taught, Day, shoots his own source images, carefully selecting objects that resonate with personal memories, before collaging them into psychedelic dreamscapes. The results are surreal, absurd and often humourous, touching on both contemporary and historical narratives and reprocessing artefacts from popular culture. Recent solo exhibits in Melbourne include 'Permanent Deferral' (2013), 'End' (2012), 'After the Breadcrumbs' (2009), and 'A Little Boob' (2008).
Day's suite of works in 'Melbourne Now' are taken from the 2013 'Permanent Deferral' series. The black-and-white photo-collages offer insights into the contemporary media landscapes and evoke almost childlike wonder in the viewer. In the broadest sense, the works offer escapism and the chance to choose your own adventure.
Untitled: Permanent Deferral (2013).
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia).
Supported by the Bowness Family Foundation.
Destiny Deacon and Virgina Fraser
Destiny Deacon is one of Australia's leading artists, whose work has been presented in major international exhibitions including the prestigious 'Documenta 11,' Kassell (2002). Virgina Fraser is an artist, writer and curator whose practice focusses on film, video and installation using light in various forms. In 2010 Fraser was a Fellow at the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra, Australia.
Adapting the quotidian formats of snapshot photography, home videos, community TV and performance modes drawn from vaudeville and minstrel shows, Deacon's artistic practice is marked by a wicked yet melancholy comedic and satirical disposition. In decidedly lo-fi vignettes, friends, family and members of Melbourne's Indigenous community appear in mischievous narratives that amplify and deconstruct stereotypes of Indigenous identity and national history. For 'Melbourne Now', Deacon and Fraser present a trailer for a film noir that does not exist, a suite of photographs and a carnivalesque diorama. The pair's playful political critiques underscore a prevailing sense of post colonial unease, while connecting their work to wider global discourses concerned with racial struggle and cultural identity.
Title: Blakula's Daughter and Joey (2011).
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 takes as its premise the idea that a city is significantly shaped by the artists, designers, architects, choreographers, intellectuals and community groups that live and work in its midsts. The aim is to explore how Melbourne's visual artists and creative practitioners contribute to the dynamic cultural identity of this city. The result is an exhibition that celebrates what is unique about Melbourne's art, design, and architecture communities.
The intention of this exhibition is 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 (e.g., family-friendly commissions developed especially for children and young audiences that aimed to encourage participatory learning for kids and families etc.)
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 V [1]
Contemporary Jewellery
Along with Munich, Amsterdam and other cities, Melbourne (Australia) is recognized as a leading centre for the production of contemporary jewellery. Established training courses have contributed to this pre-eminence, but the community of local jewellers also includes those who are largely self-taught or whose work has emerged as a result of training in other creative fields. In addition, there are makers whose practice has evolved out of millennia-old cultural traditions, and others who trained overseas and have introduced new ways of working to the local scene.
This diversity of backgrounds among the jewellers represented in 'Melbourne Now' is mirrored by the variety of their technical, material and conceptual approaches to making jewellery. Necklaces, bracelets, rings and brooches of precious and semi-precious metals sit alongside others made of resin, porcelain and recycled materials. In this personal and dynamic jewellery merging craft, design, tradition and innovation, the intimate connexion between maker and object intersects with that which develops between object and wearer. Melbourne architecture firm, Muir Mendes, was commissioned to design the contemporary jewellery project for 'Melbourne Now.'
Robert Baines, Rosanne Batley, Nicholas Bastin, Bin Dixon-Ward, Mark Edgoose, Maureen Faye-Chauhan, Stephen Gallagher, Allona Goren, Jo Hawley, Kirsten Haydon, Marian Hosking, Carlier Makigawa, Sally Marsland, Vicki Mason, David Neale, Tiffany Parbs, Nicole Polentas, Phoebe Porter, Emma Price, Lousje Skala, Blanche Tiden, Meredith Turnball, Manon van Kouswijk.
Daniel Crooks
New Zealand born, Daniel Crooks has lived and worked in Melbourne (Australia) for more than twenty years. A multi-disciplinary artist, Crooks is well known for his arresting video works in which he masterfully splices and rearranges once-familiar environments into undulating cacophonies of movement. Demonstrating a complex awareness of motion, control, physics, design and mathematical code, Crooks' work elevates time into physical, malleable dimension and challenges our understanding of it as a linear construct.
Commissioned for 'Melbourne Now', Crooks' most recent video work focuses his 'time-splice' treatment on the city's famous laneways. As the camera traces a direct, Hamiltonian pathway through these lanes, familiar surroundings are captured in seamless temporal shifts. Cobblestones, signs, concrete, street art, shadows and people are gracefully panned, stretched and distorted across our vision, swept up in what the artist describes as a 'dance of energy.' Exposing the underlying kinetic rhythm of all we see, Crooks' work highlights each movement once, gloriously, before moving on, always forward, transforming Melbourne's gritty and often inhospitable laneways into hypnotic and alluring sites.
Note: this commisioned work for Melbourne Now was supported by Julie, Michael and Silvia Kantor.
Georgina Cue
Georgina Cue is known for her diverse practice encompassing large-scale installations which combine embroidery with motifs of film noir and architectural space. Since 2007 she has exhibited regularly in Mebourne (Australia), where she lives and works.
The 'Aleph' (2010) is a large installation of embroidery on tapestry canvas that uses trompe l'oeil to create the sense of entering a room. Heavy, patterned drapery and carpets create an atmosphere of time past, and the subdued palette and dark shadows evoke the mystery and suspense of film noir. The work was first shown in an exhibition in Melbourne titled, 'Indicium,' meaning indication or sign in which the artist re-interpreted early twentieth century police photographs of New York crime scenes in embroidery, exploring how mystery and drama imbue everyday objects in these locations. While the melodrama and passion of the crime is absent once the body is removed, the space resonates with the memory of the event, like a stage set after a performance.
Juan Davila
Juan Davila was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1946, and migrated to Melbourne in 1974. In drawing upon a striking array of historical art and cultural references - religious, modernist and avant-garde art, Latin American folk art traditions, pornographic and pop-cultural motifs and postcolonial and psychoanalytical discourse - Davila has been a leading protagonist in the development of critical form of post-conceptual painting since the late 1970s, and continues to be at the forefront of cultural and political critique in contemporary art internationally.
More recently, Davila has turned to the genres of landscape and historical painting, as well as portraiture and urban forms, to questtion the sweep of modernity and colonisation, the rapaciousness of late capitalism, and environmental degradation. Recent paintings - such as 'After Image, Ecran' and 'After Image, Kreon,' both 2013 - continue to explore indifferent relations between Indigenous, European and migrant communities. In the symbolic and increasingly spectacular forms of advertising and publicity in today's media, Davila identifies a new form of colonisation: of subjectivity itself. With technical virtuosity, his paintings achieve monumental significance - encapsulating beauty and emotion, while invoking society's intolerance of non-commercial enjoyment or desire.
Christopher Day
True to the origins of documentary photography, East Melbourne-born photographer, Christopher Day works with everyday objects; his unique use of imagery and choice of subjects, however, turn the genre on its head. Self-taught, Day, shoots his own source images, carefully selecting objects that resonate with personal memories, before collaging them into psychedelic dreamscapes. The results are surreal, absurd and often humourous, touching on both contemporary and historical narratives and reprocessing artefacts from popular culture. Recent solo exhibits in Melbourne include 'Permanent Deferral' (2013), 'End' (2012), 'After the Breadcrumbs' (2009), and 'A Little Boob' (2008).
Day's suite of works in 'Melbourne Now' are taken from the 2013 'Permanent Deferral' series. The black-and-white photo-collages offer insights into the contemporary media landscapes and evoke almost childlike wonder in the viewer. In the broadest sense, the works offer escapism and the chance to choose your own adventure.
Courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia).
Supported by the Bowness Family Foundation.
Destiny Deacon and Virgina Fraser
Destiny Deacon is one of Australia's leading artists, whose work has been presented in major international exhibitions including the prestigious 'Documenta 11,' Kassell (2002). Virgina Fraser is an artist, writer and curator whose practice focusses on film, video and installation using light in various forms. In 2010 Fraser was a Fellow at the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra, Australia.
Adapting the quotidian formats of snapshot photography, home videos, community TV and performance modes drawn from vaudeville and minstrel shows, Deacon's artistic practice is marked by a wicked yet melancholy comedic and satirical disposition. In decidedly lo-fi vignettes, friends, family and members of Melbourne's Indigenous community appear in mischievous narratives that amplify and deconstruct stereotypes of Indigenous identity and national history. For 'Melbourne Now', Deacon and Fraser present a trailer for a film noir that does not exist, a suite of photographs and a carnivalesque diorama. The pair's playful political critiques underscore a prevailing sense of post colonial unease, while connecting their work to wider global discourses concerned with racial struggle and cultural identity.
Reference
[1] T. Ellwood, Director, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).
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