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
Melbourne Now - Part X [1]
Ponch Hawkes
Ponch Hawkes was born in Melbourne (Australia) in 1946. She began to photograph in the 1970s and held her first exhibition in Melbourne in 1976. Since then Hawkes has held numerous solo shows including 'Relatively Speaking: The Family in Words and Pictures,' the Center for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 1998, and 'Generations' - at the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) in 1989. More recent one-person exhibitions include: 'Seeing Is Not Understanding,' (Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, Australia) in 2009, and 'Risk' (Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, Australia) in 2005.
For 'Melbourne Now,' Hawkes has produced a new body of work, namely, 'Drawing the Line,' (2013), that examined an aspect of how we interact with the natural environment in an urban setting. In a local park, a place of daily retreat for the artist, Hawkes encountered a phenomen of 'tree tagging.' Her initial reaction was one of profound shock and disgust at the deliberate defacing of native trees. There is an aspect of premeditated violence in these acts, yet Hawkes subsumes the aggressors' marks into redemptive images as the trees shed their bark and transforms the tags.
Ponch Hawkes, TAGS #4 (2013).
Siri Hayes
Siri Hayes was born in Melbourne in 1977. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art and a Graduate Diploma of Visual Arts at the Victorian College of Arts in 1998 and 2001 respectively. Hayes held positions as a photography lecturer and technician, and was a lecturer in photomedia at Monash University, Melbourne (Australia). Since 2000 her work has been included in group exhibitions throughtout Australia, as well as in Finland, France, Japan and Poland.
Hayes' works often addresses environmental themes within art historical conventions of the French Impressionist painters, who painted their subjects en plein air (i.e., outdoors), and the Romantic landscape paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Here, modern 'explorers' and 'wanderers' paint and make photographs in a contemporary environment. The environment, however, is one of decay: devasted by fire, littered with tree stumps and broken branches and its native vegetation replaced by introduced, harvested plantation timber. By adapting historical painting conventions to a modern setting, Hayes draws attention to the changing condition of the contemporary landscape.
Siri Hayes, Wanderer above a sea of images (2013).
Andrew Hazewinkel
Multidisciplinary artist Andrew Hazewinkel was born in Melbourne (Australia) in 1965 and has exhibited widely in Australia and abroad for more than a decade. His practice includes photography, video, installation and sculpture. Hazewinkel's work draws its influence from a wide range of sources, the most pertinent and apparent being anthropology, archaeology and other recordings of history. This is not only evident in the subjects of his work, but also in the techniques and methods he employs, which in the past have seen him take a sculptural approach to collage, often incorporating ready-made objects.
In his works, Material Collision - staring together at the stars #1, #2, nd #3 (2013), Hazewinkel's archival exploration address history, time, materiality and process. These large works on carorundum sandpaper re-contextualize and, in a stange way, revive three forgotten object of antiquity. Despite not being original three-dimensional objects, these documentations are nonetheless weighted with history. Hazewinkel's interpretation and re-documentation of these perhaps forgotten objects, bridges a gap between the present and past, and transforms our experience and study of history, modernity and contemporaneity.
Andrew Hazewinkel, Material Collision - staring together at the stars #1. Detail View (2013).
Bianca Hester
Since the early 2000s, Melbourne (Australia) artist Bianca Hester has worked across installations, sculpture, video, writing, sound and collaborative disciplines to create action and response performances. Her projects typically observe junctures between different social conditions, sites and moments in time, and involve architectural and sculptural interventions. By actively engaging with (rather than against) unpredictable forces, Hester aims to heighten the spatial and bodily awareness of both the performer and the viewer. Her actions are preserved and represented through documentary photographs and film.
'Hoops: sound tests, performances documents' (2011-13), is an exploration of abstract sound and repeated gesture, produced by rolling and spiralling steel hoops along concrete, floorboards and pavement. Composed as open-ended events, Hester's ongoing Hoops projects have previously been presented in car parks, public squares, community clubs and urban laneways - all civic spaces - but never in a museum context. By staging 'Hoops' performance within the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia), the artist negotiates a new set of criteria, acting in response to the wider conceptual narrative of Melbourne Now.
Bianca Hester, Sound Test with Hoops in Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia (2011).
Still performance component of the project - A World Fully Accessible by No Living Being (2011).
Christopher LG Hill
Christopher LG Hill has been involved in various projects at both artist-run and institutional spaces across Melbourne (Australia), including co-directing the artist-run initative Y3K (2009-2011), editing the annual periodical 'Endless Lonely Planet', and curating the 'Third/Endless Lonely Planet' and curating the 'Third/Fourth Melbourne Artist Facilitated Biennial' at Margaret Lawrence Gallery (Melbourne, Australia) in 2013. Engaging with concepts of psychology, sociology and gestural politics, Hill's idiosyncratic practice examines the relationship with people, freedom and objects. The artist describes his work as 'embracing anarchist ideas within interpersonal relationships, materilized through free intellectual property, publications, performance object dialogues and gestural interactions.' He often works with other artists to create critical and open responses to his performances and installations.
Hill's, 'Form free temporal groupings,' (2013), is an aesthetically lo-fi installation that involves collaborations with young artists and designers 'ffiXXed,' Tahi Moore, Virginia Overell, Alex Vivian, Hugh Egan Westland, Annie Wu and Ben Tankard - among others. A range of impromptu performances, including readings and discussion groups, form part of this work, allowing the artist, his collaborators and the public to explore interactions between the installation and the broader artistic practices.
Christopher LG Hill. Free feudal barter store (2013).
Installation view.
Gertrude Contemporary, 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
Melbourne Now - Part X [1]
Ponch Hawkes
Ponch Hawkes was born in Melbourne (Australia) in 1946. She began to photograph in the 1970s and held her first exhibition in Melbourne in 1976. Since then Hawkes has held numerous solo shows including 'Relatively Speaking: The Family in Words and Pictures,' the Center for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, 1998, and 'Generations' - at the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) in 1989. More recent one-person exhibitions include: 'Seeing Is Not Understanding,' (Horsham Regional Art Gallery, Victoria, Australia) in 2009, and 'Risk' (Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne, Australia) in 2005.
For 'Melbourne Now,' Hawkes has produced a new body of work, namely, 'Drawing the Line,' (2013), that examined an aspect of how we interact with the natural environment in an urban setting. In a local park, a place of daily retreat for the artist, Hawkes encountered a phenomen of 'tree tagging.' Her initial reaction was one of profound shock and disgust at the deliberate defacing of native trees. There is an aspect of premeditated violence in these acts, yet Hawkes subsumes the aggressors' marks into redemptive images as the trees shed their bark and transforms the tags.
Siri Hayes
Siri Hayes was born in Melbourne in 1977. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art and a Graduate Diploma of Visual Arts at the Victorian College of Arts in 1998 and 2001 respectively. Hayes held positions as a photography lecturer and technician, and was a lecturer in photomedia at Monash University, Melbourne (Australia). Since 2000 her work has been included in group exhibitions throughtout Australia, as well as in Finland, France, Japan and Poland.
Hayes' works often addresses environmental themes within art historical conventions of the French Impressionist painters, who painted their subjects en plein air (i.e., outdoors), and the Romantic landscape paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Here, modern 'explorers' and 'wanderers' paint and make photographs in a contemporary environment. The environment, however, is one of decay: devasted by fire, littered with tree stumps and broken branches and its native vegetation replaced by introduced, harvested plantation timber. By adapting historical painting conventions to a modern setting, Hayes draws attention to the changing condition of the contemporary landscape.
Andrew Hazewinkel
Multidisciplinary artist Andrew Hazewinkel was born in Melbourne (Australia) in 1965 and has exhibited widely in Australia and abroad for more than a decade. His practice includes photography, video, installation and sculpture. Hazewinkel's work draws its influence from a wide range of sources, the most pertinent and apparent being anthropology, archaeology and other recordings of history. This is not only evident in the subjects of his work, but also in the techniques and methods he employs, which in the past have seen him take a sculptural approach to collage, often incorporating ready-made objects.
In his works, Material Collision - staring together at the stars #1, #2, nd #3 (2013), Hazewinkel's archival exploration address history, time, materiality and process. These large works on carorundum sandpaper re-contextualize and, in a stange way, revive three forgotten object of antiquity. Despite not being original three-dimensional objects, these documentations are nonetheless weighted with history. Hazewinkel's interpretation and re-documentation of these perhaps forgotten objects, bridges a gap between the present and past, and transforms our experience and study of history, modernity and contemporaneity.
Bianca Hester
Since the early 2000s, Melbourne (Australia) artist Bianca Hester has worked across installations, sculpture, video, writing, sound and collaborative disciplines to create action and response performances. Her projects typically observe junctures between different social conditions, sites and moments in time, and involve architectural and sculptural interventions. By actively engaging with (rather than against) unpredictable forces, Hester aims to heighten the spatial and bodily awareness of both the performer and the viewer. Her actions are preserved and represented through documentary photographs and film.
'Hoops: sound tests, performances documents' (2011-13), is an exploration of abstract sound and repeated gesture, produced by rolling and spiralling steel hoops along concrete, floorboards and pavement. Composed as open-ended events, Hester's ongoing Hoops projects have previously been presented in car parks, public squares, community clubs and urban laneways - all civic spaces - but never in a museum context. By staging 'Hoops' performance within the National Gallery of Victoria (Australia), the artist negotiates a new set of criteria, acting in response to the wider conceptual narrative of Melbourne Now.
Still performance component of the project - A World Fully Accessible by No Living Being (2011).
Christopher LG Hill
Christopher LG Hill has been involved in various projects at both artist-run and institutional spaces across Melbourne (Australia), including co-directing the artist-run initative Y3K (2009-2011), editing the annual periodical 'Endless Lonely Planet', and curating the 'Third/Endless Lonely Planet' and curating the 'Third/Fourth Melbourne Artist Facilitated Biennial' at Margaret Lawrence Gallery (Melbourne, Australia) in 2013. Engaging with concepts of psychology, sociology and gestural politics, Hill's idiosyncratic practice examines the relationship with people, freedom and objects. The artist describes his work as 'embracing anarchist ideas within interpersonal relationships, materilized through free intellectual property, publications, performance object dialogues and gestural interactions.' He often works with other artists to create critical and open responses to his performances and installations.
Hill's, 'Form free temporal groupings,' (2013), is an aesthetically lo-fi installation that involves collaborations with young artists and designers 'ffiXXed,' Tahi Moore, Virginia Overell, Alex Vivian, Hugh Egan Westland, Annie Wu and Ben Tankard - among others. A range of impromptu performances, including readings and discussion groups, form part of this work, allowing the artist, his collaborators and the public to explore interactions between the installation and the broader artistic practices.
Installation view.
Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, Australia.
Reference: [1] T. Ellwood, Director, National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).
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