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 sych 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 this 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 VIII
Melbourne Now - Part VIII [1]
Tony Garifalakis
Through his expansive practice, Tony Garifalakis calls into question the authority and veracity of political, social, religious and artistic institutiions. Working across photography, collage, sculpture and installation, his works uncover connections between consumer culture and control society, enacting an emancipatory subversion of commodities and consumer iconography.
In 'Melbourne Now' Garifalakis presents 'Mutually Assured Destruction, 2012-2013,' a series of collages that make use of denim, and moreover, mine its rich culture connotations. These new works juxtapose loaded political and corporate imagery with cute and benign clip art. By confusing the disparate images, the works collapse any power they might have in other contexts. The collages describe casual links between corporate culture of the First World and religious fundamentalist militarism. Garifalakis reveals denim as a material paradox: at once a stylistic representation of gang and outlaw culturesm and a billion-dollar mainstream global fashion industry.
Title and Year of Creation: East River (2012).
Starlie Geikie
Hovering somewhere in the realms of drawing, printmaking textile design, installation and craft, Melbourne-based artist Starlie Geikie's works resist easy classification. Since completing a Master of Fine Art at RMIT University in 2002, Geikie has developed a unique vusual language that mines rich archival if material and historical references, from feminist literary fiction and modernist interior design to Shaker furniture and the collages of Hannah Höch.
Combining formalist concerns with an atmosphere redolent of the 1970s, Geikie's recent works combine references to the Bauhaus weavings of Gunta Stölz and Anni Albers, the visionary geometric drawings of Emma Kunz and the colorfield paintings of Morris Louis, as well as experimental textile dying, Amish quilts and aesthetics of nautical knot craft. While making her works, Geike often imagines them in certain historical or cultural settings, such as modernist interior of a Geoffrey Bawa house, or sitting on a Charlotte Perriand chair. As she explains, 'I think of [my works]...in the way an art director would. They became props in interior shoots of 1970s movies.'
Title and Year of Creation: Moors (2013).
Mira Gojak
Mira Gojak completed a Bachelor of Science, majoring in psychology and zoology, at the University of Adelaide (Australia) in 1984, before taking a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, graduating in 1992. Gojak's practice encompasses drawing and sculpture and, since 1994, she has exhibited widely in a range of solo and group exhibitions, both locally and internationally. In 2005, Gojak was awarded the prestigeous Maddocks Art Prize. She currently lives and works in Melbourne (Australia).
With 'Transfer station 2,' (2011), Gojak creates a sculptural work of unfurling, freewheeling loops, shaky erratic lines and clusters of blossoming tangles that appears like a drawing suspended in space. A high-keyed palette of cobalt blues, soft pinks and fluorescent yellows activates heavier blackened thickets that punctuate perspectives of uninterrupted space. Suspended from the ceiling by a single line, Gojak's sculpture is not-quite-settled-upon Venn diagram. Its openness is held still in a moment, together with all the scribbled-out mistakes, digressions and exclusions, stalling or directing the movement and exchange circulating around forms.
Title and Year of Creation: Transfer Station 2 - Detailed View (2011).
Agatha Gothe-Snape
Incorporating text, color and space, the work of Agatha Gothe-Snape considers physical, emotional and historical responses to the reception of art. Through her conceptually driven and cross-disciplinary practice, the artist aims to develop new conversations around institutional, social and historical discourse, while maintaining an ongoing dialogue between audiences and the social world. Often taking form as performances, endlessly looped Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, visual scores, posters and collaboratively produced art objects, Gothe-Snape's works are regularly made in cooperation with other artists, performers, dancers, and the audience.
Drawing influence from concrete poetry, colorfield painting and the emergence of internet art, 'Powerpoints, 2008-2013,' is an ongoing series of unlimited-edition digital works that utilize the basic communicative tools of Microsoft PowerPoint, established in 2008, and conceived as a lifelong project, Gothe-Snape's slide shows are created sporadically, manifested in a private and contractual email correspondence between artist and subscribers. Since its inception, Gothe-Snape has produced a total of twenty-four works in the series, including two new instalments made especially for Melbourne Now. This is the first time the series has been shown in its entirety.
Title and Year of Creation: Powerpoints, 2008-2013 (Detail).
Elizabeth Gower
Since the 1970s Elizabeth Gower has created and exhibited intricate collages, composed from the detritus of everyday life which she carefully selects and arranges in rhythmic and geometric permutations. Gower has exhibited widely throughout Australia and overseas in numerous solo and group shows, and has curated a number of exhibitions. She is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian College of the Arts, and is currently completing a PhD at Monash University.
The first version of this work was displayed recently in an exhibition, curated by Gower, that explored the appropiation and use of urban detritus as a visual art strategy by a variety of Melbourne artists. Further developed for 'Melbourne Now,' Gower;s contribution now comprises 150 circular components, each made up of tea-bag tags, price tags and elements cut from junk mail catalogues, which colonise the wall like a galaxy of vibrant constellations. Akin to the light from long-dead stars, the familiar ephemera, which is usually thrown out, recycled or composted, now serves a new purpose and takes on a mesmeric, formal beauty.
Title and Year of Creation: 150 Rotations 2013 (Detail).
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 sych 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 this 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 VIII
Melbourne Now - Part VIII [1]
Tony Garifalakis
Through his expansive practice, Tony Garifalakis calls into question the authority and veracity of political, social, religious and artistic institutiions. Working across photography, collage, sculpture and installation, his works uncover connections between consumer culture and control society, enacting an emancipatory subversion of commodities and consumer iconography.
In 'Melbourne Now' Garifalakis presents 'Mutually Assured Destruction, 2012-2013,' a series of collages that make use of denim, and moreover, mine its rich culture connotations. These new works juxtapose loaded political and corporate imagery with cute and benign clip art. By confusing the disparate images, the works collapse any power they might have in other contexts. The collages describe casual links between corporate culture of the First World and religious fundamentalist militarism. Garifalakis reveals denim as a material paradox: at once a stylistic representation of gang and outlaw culturesm and a billion-dollar mainstream global fashion industry.
Starlie Geikie
Hovering somewhere in the realms of drawing, printmaking textile design, installation and craft, Melbourne-based artist Starlie Geikie's works resist easy classification. Since completing a Master of Fine Art at RMIT University in 2002, Geikie has developed a unique vusual language that mines rich archival if material and historical references, from feminist literary fiction and modernist interior design to Shaker furniture and the collages of Hannah Höch.
Combining formalist concerns with an atmosphere redolent of the 1970s, Geikie's recent works combine references to the Bauhaus weavings of Gunta Stölz and Anni Albers, the visionary geometric drawings of Emma Kunz and the colorfield paintings of Morris Louis, as well as experimental textile dying, Amish quilts and aesthetics of nautical knot craft. While making her works, Geike often imagines them in certain historical or cultural settings, such as modernist interior of a Geoffrey Bawa house, or sitting on a Charlotte Perriand chair. As she explains, 'I think of [my works]...in the way an art director would. They became props in interior shoots of 1970s movies.'
Mira Gojak
Mira Gojak completed a Bachelor of Science, majoring in psychology and zoology, at the University of Adelaide (Australia) in 1984, before taking a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, graduating in 1992. Gojak's practice encompasses drawing and sculpture and, since 1994, she has exhibited widely in a range of solo and group exhibitions, both locally and internationally. In 2005, Gojak was awarded the prestigeous Maddocks Art Prize. She currently lives and works in Melbourne (Australia).
With 'Transfer station 2,' (2011), Gojak creates a sculptural work of unfurling, freewheeling loops, shaky erratic lines and clusters of blossoming tangles that appears like a drawing suspended in space. A high-keyed palette of cobalt blues, soft pinks and fluorescent yellows activates heavier blackened thickets that punctuate perspectives of uninterrupted space. Suspended from the ceiling by a single line, Gojak's sculpture is not-quite-settled-upon Venn diagram. Its openness is held still in a moment, together with all the scribbled-out mistakes, digressions and exclusions, stalling or directing the movement and exchange circulating around forms.
Agatha Gothe-Snape
Incorporating text, color and space, the work of Agatha Gothe-Snape considers physical, emotional and historical responses to the reception of art. Through her conceptually driven and cross-disciplinary practice, the artist aims to develop new conversations around institutional, social and historical discourse, while maintaining an ongoing dialogue between audiences and the social world. Often taking form as performances, endlessly looped Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, visual scores, posters and collaboratively produced art objects, Gothe-Snape's works are regularly made in cooperation with other artists, performers, dancers, and the audience.
Drawing influence from concrete poetry, colorfield painting and the emergence of internet art, 'Powerpoints, 2008-2013,' is an ongoing series of unlimited-edition digital works that utilize the basic communicative tools of Microsoft PowerPoint, established in 2008, and conceived as a lifelong project, Gothe-Snape's slide shows are created sporadically, manifested in a private and contractual email correspondence between artist and subscribers. Since its inception, Gothe-Snape has produced a total of twenty-four works in the series, including two new instalments made especially for Melbourne Now. This is the first time the series has been shown in its entirety.
Elizabeth Gower
Since the 1970s Elizabeth Gower has created and exhibited intricate collages, composed from the detritus of everyday life which she carefully selects and arranges in rhythmic and geometric permutations. Gower has exhibited widely throughout Australia and overseas in numerous solo and group shows, and has curated a number of exhibitions. She is a lecturer at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian College of the Arts, and is currently completing a PhD at Monash University.
The first version of this work was displayed recently in an exhibition, curated by Gower, that explored the appropiation and use of urban detritus as a visual art strategy by a variety of Melbourne artists. Further developed for 'Melbourne Now,' Gower;s contribution now comprises 150 circular components, each made up of tea-bag tags, price tags and elements cut from junk mail catalogues, which colonise the wall like a galaxy of vibrant constellations. Akin to the light from long-dead stars, the familiar ephemera, which is usually thrown out, recycled or composted, now serves a new purpose and takes on a mesmeric, formal beauty.
Reference: [1] T. Ellwood, Director, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).
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