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 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 IX [1]
Greatest Hits
Greatest Hits is a collective comprised of artists Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McGlinn. Formed in Melbourne in 2008, the group produces a variety of work through outsourcing and minimal interventions as a form of information management. Interested in the gathering speed and increase in communication, the collectives focus is on a culture created by the environment, characterized by immediacy, instinct and renewal. Greatest Hits have exhibited in various solo and group shows both internationally and locally, including Untitled, The Projects Melbourne, and FX, Center for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne.
In Untitled, 2012, Greatest Hits brings together two well-known tropes: the Japanese beckoning cat 'maneki-neko' and the representation of the black cat as an ill omen. The common associations of the icons - that of invting good and bad fortunes respectively - set the stage for a pseudo logical argument that attempts to rid itself of meaning. Taking its cue from the voiding effects of exposure to excessive information, the work engages with the language of surface culture, in which depth and focus is increasingly replaced by montage and movement.
Title and Year of Creation: Untitled (2012).
Helen Grogan, Shelly Lasica and Anne-Marie May
The collaborative practice of Helen Grogan, Shelly Lasica and Anne-Marie May brings choreography and movement into the gallery context, mediated by layers of projection, sound and objects. Sharing interests in process, collaboration and intermedial practices, the artists draw on credentials in varied art forms: Grogan studied philosophy, choreography and art curatorship and since 2003 has exhibited as an installation artist; Lasica is a choreographer and dancer whose work is characterized by cross-disciplinary collaborations and the presentation of dance in various spatial contexts; and May studied painting, her twenty-five-year practice concerned with the interplay between different materials and processes.
The installation 'INSIDE VIANNE AGAIN,' 2013, continues a collaborative project exploring the context of performance and its presentation. For Melbourne Now, dancers Deanne Butterworth, Timothy Harvey, Jo Llyod and Bonnie Paskas were recorded performing the work VIANNE, choreographed by Lasica, in the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia) space. This footage is projected back onto the space itself, including sculptural objects. Thus the work creates slippages between layers of representation, time, architecture and bodies - of both the performance and viewers who navigate the space.
Helen Grogan, Shelley Lasica, Anne-Marie May, INSIDE VIANNE AGAIN (2013).
Michelle Hamer
Michelle Hamer is an architect-turned-textile artist whose work interrogates the vernacular of Melbourne's civic landscape. Since 2005 Hamer has produced small-scale needlepoint tapestries that reference forms of text and signage in the urban environment. From road signs to graffiti to billboards and advertising, Hamer's interest is in language and meaning, and her tapestries are a kind of social cartography. Journeying around specific sites, Hamer first takes endless snapshots before sifting and sorting through them, formulating a visual hypothesis which she later executes in material form.
Hamer's contribution to Melbourne Now pairs works referencing local signage, such as 'Blame and punishment the individual' (2013). While the contrasting palettes and particular nuances of typography, built architecture and native vegetation point to specific times and places, when amplified and dislocated Hamer's chosen text suggest a more universal narrative of perplexity and turmoil. The artist describes these powerful distillations as 'revealing the small in-between moments that characterize everday life.'
Michelle Hamer, Can't (2013).
Treahna Hamm
Melbourne-born Treahna Hamm was disconnected from her Yorta Yorta family in early infancy, but grew up in her ancestral lands Dhungala (the Murray River), upstream from Echuca. In 2001 Hamm return to Barmah in order to trace her living connection to this Country. She participated in a coil-weaving workshop led by Yvonne Koolmatrie and embarked on didjirri (deep listening) in communication with female elders. Hamm's subsequest woven fiber and sculptural work has issued from a resolve to re-claim the cultural stories, objects, designs and philsophy previously hidden from her.
Hamm's work for Melbourne Now is a zinc breastplate that subverts and transforms objects of disquieting and ambivalent status made by British colonisers as a way of labelling, rewarding and pacifying their colonised subjects. This deep crescent-shaped object references metal breastplates, such as that of "king Billy' (William Barak), which belonged to Hamm's Indigeneous family. The intricate curvilinear motifs incised in the breastplate expresses her peoples resilient culture and indelible connection to Dhungala Country, which the tide of history cannot wash away.
Treahna Hamm, Cummeragunjah, Breast Plate 2 (2005).
Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.
Brent Harris
Brent Harris was born in New Zealand and has lived and worked in Melbourne (Australia) since 1981. A painter who also workes extensively in the prints and drawings media, Harris is well known for his explorations of human subjectivity in images that hover between figuration and abstraction. His work has undergone several radical shifts over the course of his career, and an important new direction was signalled by the group of monotypes begun in 2012. Intimate and experimental, these brooding nocturnal scenes evoke a fantastic nether world of supernatural creatures and aging figures inspired by the artist's reflection upon the psychology of death.
Since Edgar Degas' time, the monotype has been prized by artists as a medium particularly suited to improvisation. In "The Fall" (2012), included in Melbourne Now, Harris has exploited this to the full, intuitively reworking and resolving his imagery on the plates before printing them. The enigmatic imagery in Harris monotypes - tumbling figures, ghoulish heads, skulls, inky skies and dark, mysterious bodies of water - speaks to our deepest fears concerning mortality and the absurdity of the human condition.
The Fall (no. 9), 2012.
Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.
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 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 IX [1]
Greatest Hits
Greatest Hits is a collective comprised of artists Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McGlinn. Formed in Melbourne in 2008, the group produces a variety of work through outsourcing and minimal interventions as a form of information management. Interested in the gathering speed and increase in communication, the collectives focus is on a culture created by the environment, characterized by immediacy, instinct and renewal. Greatest Hits have exhibited in various solo and group shows both internationally and locally, including Untitled, The Projects Melbourne, and FX, Center for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne.
In Untitled, 2012, Greatest Hits brings together two well-known tropes: the Japanese beckoning cat 'maneki-neko' and the representation of the black cat as an ill omen. The common associations of the icons - that of invting good and bad fortunes respectively - set the stage for a pseudo logical argument that attempts to rid itself of meaning. Taking its cue from the voiding effects of exposure to excessive information, the work engages with the language of surface culture, in which depth and focus is increasingly replaced by montage and movement.
Helen Grogan, Shelly Lasica and Anne-Marie May
The collaborative practice of Helen Grogan, Shelly Lasica and Anne-Marie May brings choreography and movement into the gallery context, mediated by layers of projection, sound and objects. Sharing interests in process, collaboration and intermedial practices, the artists draw on credentials in varied art forms: Grogan studied philosophy, choreography and art curatorship and since 2003 has exhibited as an installation artist; Lasica is a choreographer and dancer whose work is characterized by cross-disciplinary collaborations and the presentation of dance in various spatial contexts; and May studied painting, her twenty-five-year practice concerned with the interplay between different materials and processes.
The installation 'INSIDE VIANNE AGAIN,' 2013, continues a collaborative project exploring the context of performance and its presentation. For Melbourne Now, dancers Deanne Butterworth, Timothy Harvey, Jo Llyod and Bonnie Paskas were recorded performing the work VIANNE, choreographed by Lasica, in the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia) space. This footage is projected back onto the space itself, including sculptural objects. Thus the work creates slippages between layers of representation, time, architecture and bodies - of both the performance and viewers who navigate the space.
Michelle Hamer
Michelle Hamer is an architect-turned-textile artist whose work interrogates the vernacular of Melbourne's civic landscape. Since 2005 Hamer has produced small-scale needlepoint tapestries that reference forms of text and signage in the urban environment. From road signs to graffiti to billboards and advertising, Hamer's interest is in language and meaning, and her tapestries are a kind of social cartography. Journeying around specific sites, Hamer first takes endless snapshots before sifting and sorting through them, formulating a visual hypothesis which she later executes in material form.
Hamer's contribution to Melbourne Now pairs works referencing local signage, such as 'Blame and punishment the individual' (2013). While the contrasting palettes and particular nuances of typography, built architecture and native vegetation point to specific times and places, when amplified and dislocated Hamer's chosen text suggest a more universal narrative of perplexity and turmoil. The artist describes these powerful distillations as 'revealing the small in-between moments that characterize everday life.'
Treahna Hamm
Melbourne-born Treahna Hamm was disconnected from her Yorta Yorta family in early infancy, but grew up in her ancestral lands Dhungala (the Murray River), upstream from Echuca. In 2001 Hamm return to Barmah in order to trace her living connection to this Country. She participated in a coil-weaving workshop led by Yvonne Koolmatrie and embarked on didjirri (deep listening) in communication with female elders. Hamm's subsequest woven fiber and sculptural work has issued from a resolve to re-claim the cultural stories, objects, designs and philsophy previously hidden from her.
Hamm's work for Melbourne Now is a zinc breastplate that subverts and transforms objects of disquieting and ambivalent status made by British colonisers as a way of labelling, rewarding and pacifying their colonised subjects. This deep crescent-shaped object references metal breastplates, such as that of "king Billy' (William Barak), which belonged to Hamm's Indigeneous family. The intricate curvilinear motifs incised in the breastplate expresses her peoples resilient culture and indelible connection to Dhungala Country, which the tide of history cannot wash away.
Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.
Brent Harris
Brent Harris was born in New Zealand and has lived and worked in Melbourne (Australia) since 1981. A painter who also workes extensively in the prints and drawings media, Harris is well known for his explorations of human subjectivity in images that hover between figuration and abstraction. His work has undergone several radical shifts over the course of his career, and an important new direction was signalled by the group of monotypes begun in 2012. Intimate and experimental, these brooding nocturnal scenes evoke a fantastic nether world of supernatural creatures and aging figures inspired by the artist's reflection upon the psychology of death.
Since Edgar Degas' time, the monotype has been prized by artists as a medium particularly suited to improvisation. In "The Fall" (2012), included in Melbourne Now, Harris has exploited this to the full, intuitively reworking and resolving his imagery on the plates before printing them. The enigmatic imagery in Harris monotypes - tumbling figures, ghoulish heads, skulls, inky skies and dark, mysterious bodies of water - speaks to our deepest fears concerning mortality and the absurdity of the human condition.
Courtesy: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia.
Reference:
[1] T. Ellwood, Director, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).
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