LAUNCH WEEKEND

Octopus 17: Forever Transformed Exhibition Opening: 6pm–8pm Friday 28 July

Open House Melbourne Weekend: 10am-4:30pm Saturday 29 July and 10am-4pm Sunday 30 July

Location: 21-31 High Street, Preston South 

Gertrude Contemporary is moving forward!

Over the weekend of Friday 28 July – Sunday 30 July Gertrude will launch our new architecturally-designed location and first exhibition in Preston South.  

Our first exhibition, Octopus 17: Forever Transformed curated by Georgie Meagher will be officially opened on the evening of Friday 28 July. As part of Open House Melbourne, over the following Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 July, the public will be offered a special look into our new building in its entirety – including the exhibition and back of house artist studio spaces.  

Architecture firm Edition Office have designed the fit-out of our High Street premises. The building was built in 1983 and previously operated as a retail furniture showroom.  The large, open-plan building offers a flexible shell within which custom-made spaces have been designed for Gertrude’s artistic program.  The new location includes Gertrude’s main exhibition spaces, sixteen studios for our two-year studio program and administration offices.  

‘With purpose designed exhibition spaces that are expansive in scale, versatile in use, and designed with consideration of how we as an organisation support the full and expanding range of artistic practices, our new building will enable us to work with artists and curators on configurations that are adaptable and can best present projects of scale, ambition and risk’, says Mark Feary, Artistic Director.

Gertrude’s sixteen subsidised studios have been incorporated within the configuration of Gertrude’s new premises. For the first time in our history, the design of the new building privileges each artist equally, with all of the studios being of the same generous spatial proportions, as well as access to shared workshop facilities.

Importantly, all of the ground level studios have increased accessibility for artists to work on larger scaled works, as well incorporating more social areas to increase interaction between the studio artists, staff and audiences. Highly functional, flexible and neutral, these studios form an armature around the gallery spaces, making more publicly discernible Gertrude’s dual focus of supporting both the production and presentation of contemporary art. 

Located right on the main High Street strip, the area is a wonderful new home for Gertrude and our audiences.  It is a vibrant and developing hub of great food, bars and interesting shops and is highly accessible by public transport - tram, train and bus alike.  We are creating a “Gertrude’s Guide” to the new area highlighting some of our favourite places in the area. 

‘This is an important move for Gertrude – the beginning of a new chapter in our 32-year history for our artists and for our audiences.  Audience experience and accessibility were key considerations for the design of the new location.  We are thrilled to offer our audiences a unique Gertrude insight into the work of Australia’s most exciting contemporary artists at pivotal moments in their careers’, says Christine Tipton, Director, Business and Operations.

Following Octopus 17: Forever Transformed, we have an exciting major exhibition program planned at the new location for the rest of 2017.  Gertrude will present a project by Melbourne-based artist Tony Garifalakis and Mexican artist Joaquin Segura, curated by San Francisco-based researcher and independent curator Ivan Muñiz Reed and featuring new and recent works focussing on issues of violence, systems of control and political change. To conclude the year, Gertrude will present our highly anticipated annual exhibition by Gertrude’s sixteen Studio Artists.

Gertrude Glasshouse, located at 44 Glasshouse Rd, Collingwood will continue to be our satellite exhibition space and the home of the Gertrude Studio Artist Solo Exhibition Program.

Click here for more information on Octopus 17: Forever Transformed 

Click here for more information on Gertrude Contemporary, Open House Melbourne

Gertrude Contemporary is delighted to announce our 2017 studio artists:

Rebecca Agnew
Mathieu Briand
Deanne Butterworth
Greatest Hits (Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer and Simon McGlinn)
Linda Marrinon
André Piguet
Mark Shorter
Esther Stewart
Simon Zoric

These artists will enter the Gertrude Contemporary Studio Program in 2017 to join the ongoing group of artists in residence. We are thrilled to welcome these artists to Gertrude.

We commend all the artists that applied for the 2017 intake. We received a great number of applications to a very high standard and the process was extremely competitive. 

Click here for further information including artist bios.

Gertrude Contemporary accepts applications for its two-year studio residency program annually. Sign up to our mailing list for updates.

Image credits (clockwise from top left): Rebecca Agnew, Europa (Stop Animation film still), 2014, salt and mixed media, HDV, 10:48, courtesy of the artist; Mathieu Briand, Arbre sacre, 2015, wood, plastic, sand, 2 video screen, maison de Saïd (3D print), maison de Papa (3D print), atelier (3D print), wooden boat, wooden secret chest, dimensions variable, courtesy of the artist and ARNDT Gallery, Singapore and Galerie of Marseille, France and Murray White Room, Melbourne; Deanne Butterworth, Two Parts of Easy Action, 2016 with Evelyn Morris, The Substation, Melbourne, courtesy of the artist, photo by Misha Baka; Untitled (Nasubi), 2016, UV degradation of cotton, 183 x 137 cm, Success gallery, Fremantle, courtesy of the artists; The Moir Sisters, 1974, 2016, courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; André Piguet, coral reefer, 2016, ceramic, pigment, epoxy resin, wax, glass orb, 18.0 x 13.5 cm, courtesy of the artist and Station, Melbourne; Mark Shorter, 6 Metres of Plinth, 2016, Artspace, Sydney, courtesy of the artist, photo by Jessica Maurer; Esther Stewart, Behind Closed Doors, 2016, Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney, courtesy of the artist and Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney; Simon Zoric, Nirvana, 2014, poster, Blu-Tack, bedroom wall, 118 x 129 cm, courtesy of the artist

tarab and Andre Piguet present

the latest incarnation of 

careful arrangements of sonic rubbish 

a multi-channel diffusion for speakers, transducers, found sounds, found objects and room.

 Saturday May 6^th 

Studio open 2:30PM : Performance 3:00PM

Gertrude Contemporary : Studio 8 

tarab explores re-contextualised collected sounds and tactile gestures formed into dynamic, psycho-geographical compositions inspired by discarded things, found things, crawling around in the dirt, junk, the ground, rocks, dust, wind, walking aimlessly, scratchy things, decay and most if not all the things he hears and sees. More than simply documenting a given site, tarab is interested in a direct engagement with our surrounds, teasing out half narratives, visceral sensation, false leads and heightened awareness. 

tarab's has presented performances and installations in Australia, Europe, Japan, South Korea, North America and South America. Compositional works have been published by 23five (US), Naturestrip (AU), Semperflorens (RU) Unfathomless (BE), Kaon (FR), Nonlinear (AU), Crónica (PT) and Aposiopèse (BE/FR).

 tarab3058.com

André Piguet is a New Zealand-born artist based in Melbourne. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (Drawing) from RMIT, Melbourne. Recent solo exhibitions include Earth Passing Thru Trap, Sydney, Sydney (2016); Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2, Station, Melbourne (2016); HOUSE, 746 Swanston St, Black Art Projects (2016); Le Hobbit, Hekla, Brussels, Belgium (2015); and Selected Ambient Works, West Space, Melbourne (2014). Recent group exhibitions include 2000, SYDNEY, Sydney, (2016) Spring 1883, Station, Melbourne (2016); Honky Tonk Lagoon, Spring 1883, Minerva, Sydney (2015); Pestilent Unground; Epidemic Openness, Station, Melbourne (2015); Casual Conversations, Minvera, Sydney (2015) Infinite Variation, Utopian Slumps (2014); and Quake II, Arcadia Missa, London, UK (2014) Piguet is represented by Station, Melbourne. He is a current Gertrude Studio artist.

apiguet.tumblr.com

WNTR x GERTRUDE

Title:

became; becoming; becomes;

9; became 1; becoming 2; becomes 18.

WNTR collective will be performing in Studio 18 of Gertrude

Contemporary, alongside WNTR collective.

This sentence does make sense.

A performance held in studio 18 of Gertrude Contemporary, WNTR

Collective seeks to embrace miscommunications, compromises and

resolutions that come along with a collective practice consisting of 10

people.

Utilizing Studio 18 as a site to explore these nuances in conversation

and communication, a series of tasks will be set. A timekeeper will be

running in the form of a projection. A collective effort is the rule. All

the while, collective counterparts will be following the exact same set

of tasks, at the same time.. in the same space.

Come along on Saturday the 22nd of April at 2pm to view WNTR

Collective and their Collective Counterparts engage in a one‐day only

performance.

Performance runs from 2‐5pm.

Gertrude Contemporary is delighted to be hosting book launches by Perimeter Books for two of our Alumni Studio Artists at Gertrude Glasshouse in February. 

Emily Ferretti
Walking in Both Directions 

Saturday 4 February, 3–5pm
Gertrude Glasshouse
44 Glasshouse Road, Collingwood VIC 

The idea of duality is hardly a new one in the scope of art history. The threshing of tensions between lineages, aesthetics, references, techniques and their various counterpoints is at the core of art’s continual re-imagining and manifestation, especially in the context of the contemporary. During a career that has spanned the last decade, Melbourne-based artist Emily Ferretti has pieced together a convincing painterly vocabulary, only to gently rephrase, remould and recast it, time and time again. The major new book, Walking in Both Directions, arrives at a pivotal time for the artist. Bookending a three-month residency in the Australian Council’s Greene Street studio in New York City in 2015, the paintings, drawings and (in one case) major installation that feature in this book not only explore her work’s increasingly abstract, complex and faceted terrains, but her growing fascination and research into the aesthetic, compositional and philosophical underpinnings of American folk art. 
Image: Emily Ferretti, Walking in Both Directions, cover artwork, courtesy of the artist and Perimeter Books

Laith McGregor
S-O-M-E-O-N-E 

Saturday 11 February, 3–5pm
Gertrude Glasshouse
44 Glasshouse Road, Collingwood VIC 

Taking the major 2012 work S-O-M-E-O-N-E as both its title piece and a point of embarkation, this major volume offers the first substantial overview of the recent practice of Australian artist Laith McGregor. Eschewing the formal and structural conventions of the traditional monograph, this book is neither exhaustive nor linear in its breadth. Rather, it assumes the similarly rigorous and rambling quality that has come to characterise McGregor’s scroll-like drawings, idiosyncratic sculptures and painted gestures, honing its focus on a selection of key works created during the last five years. Made in close collaboration with the artist, S-O-M-E-O-N-E offers an at once critical, playful and heuristic expression of a practice that is psychic, layered, cumulative, diaristic and highly personal in its scope. In the same motion, it heralds a telling new voice in the contemporary art vernacular.
Image: Laith McGregor, S-O-M-E-O-N-E, cover image courtesy of the artist and Perimeter Books

After a fantastic year we will be closed over the summer for a few months.

- 200 Gertrude Street will be closed from 10 December 2016 – 3 February 2017

- Gertrude Glasshouse will be closed from 17 December 2016 – 23 February 2017

We look forward to seeing you all at our first major exhibition at 200 Gertrude Street, which opens on Friday 3 February, 6–8pm. Keep checking the website for details or sign up to our mailing list here to receive all of our exhibition and public program announcements.

Gertrude Contemporary is delighted to host this collaborative music project to celebrate the conclusion of the Gertrude Studios 2016 exhibition featuring new works from all of our Gertrude Studio Artists. If you have not seen this exhibition yet, you may do so before 4.30pm, then head upstairs to Studio 18 for Cormicj and Haskings.

Cormicj and Haskings – Gertrude Studio Artist Ry Haskings and Lane Cormick – have been performing together for the past two years as part of the Hell's Kitchen Flag Project.

Entry before 4.30pm will be via the front gallery entrance at 200 Gertrude Street. 
Entry after 4.30pm via Little Gore Street (rear of 200 Gertrude Street building).

Please note, Studio 18 can only be accessed via two flights of stairs.

Gertrude Contemporary is delighted to announce that the 2016 Gertrude Edition will be produced by Paul Yore (represented by Neon Parc, Melbourne), who held a studio at Gertrude from 2011–2013. For this year's Edition, Yore has created 52 unique works on fabric—one for each lower and upper case letter in the alphabet—each representing a phobia or anxiety.

The Gertrude Editions are a series of specially commissioned limited edition works by a Gertrude Alumni Artist. The Editions are an annual initiative established in 2002 to support Gertrude's artistic program and to promote the connection between our studio program and our celebrated Alumni. Gertrude Editions are held in major private and institutional collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; and Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne.

This year, Yore's Editions will be sold for $1650 each (inc. GST). They will be released for public sale at Gertrude Glasshouse on Saturday 26 November at the opening of Gertrude Editions (2002–2016), which will bring together all of the previous Gertrude Editions alongside the full set of Yore's 2016 Gertrude Edition. 

The previous Gertrude Edition artists are Jess Johnson, Anne-Marie May, Jon Campbell, Richard Lewer, Michelle Ussher, John Meade, Benjamin Armstrong, David Rosetzky, Nicholas Mangan, Robert Owen, David Noonan, Emily Floyd, Kate Beynon, Ricky Swallow.

Gertrude Editions 2002-2016 will be exhibited from 26 November–17 December 2016 at Gertrude Glasshouse (44 Glasshouse Road Collingwood. Open Thursday–Saturday, 12–5pm).

Gertrude Glasshouse is an accessible venue. Visitors with wheelchairs and strollers are recommended to be dropped at the gallery or park on Rokeby Street and access Glasshouse Road from the Rokeby Street end.

Click here to view the media release.

Image: Paul Yore, Arachnophobia, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Neon Parc, Melbourne.

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to announce the annual Open Studios Day will be held on Saturday 19 November from 12–4pm at 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. Gertrude Studio Artists will open their studios to the public, giving you an exclusive opportunity to explore the historic 200 Gertrude Street building and its studios, meet the artists, view works in progress and explore the context in which Gertrude Studio Artists work. 

The Open Studios Day coincides with the annual studios exhibition, Gertrude Studios 2016, which features new work from all of our current Studio Artists. The exhibition will be open to the public from 11am–4.30pm.

The current Gertrude Studio Artists are: Brooke Babington, Holly Childs, Adam John Cullen, Fayen d’Evie, Eric Demetriou, Debris Facility Pty Ltd, Hamishi Farah, Minna Gilligan, Ry Haskings, Rosie Isaac, Josey Kidd-Crowe, Sam Martin, Adelle Mills, Noriko Nakamura, Nik Pantazopoulos.

After exploring the artists' studios, make sure you make your way to Studio 17 and take home some rare treasures from the archive. Gertrude Contemporary will be opening its archive to the public and selling a unique selection of catalogues, books, art journals, magazines and other publications from the past 30 years.

Prices range from $1–$25, non-Gertrude publications are available on donation.

Image: Debris Facility Pty Ltd, resource and reading room, 2016.

[...] {...} [...]
Fayen d'Evie, Troy McConnell, Sophie Takách, Prue Lang.

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to present [...] {...} [...] at Gertrude Glasshouse. This project was initiated by Gertrude Studio Artist Fayen d'Evie in collaboration with Troy McConnell, Sophie Takách and Prue Lang; with Bryan Philips, Terry Foley, Louella Hogan, Benjamin Hancock and Harrison Ritchie-Jones.

Read the full details of this exhibition here. Click here to view the media release.

Glasshouse will be open to the public at select times to view the exhibition outcome. There will also be two public events and performances. See the full schedule below:

FRIDAY 21 OCTOBER
Open to the public 1:00pm – 4:30pm
Opening Performance and Public Conversation: 2:00pm – 3:00pm. 

SATURDAY 22 OCTOBER 
Open to the public 12:30pm – 4:30pm.

THURSDAY 27 OCTOBER
Open to the public 2:00pm – 5:00pm

FRIDAY 28 OCTOBER 
Open to the public 2:00pm – 5:00pm

SATURDAY 29 OCTOBER
Open to the public 2:00pm – 8:00pm
Closing Performance and Celebration: 6:00pm – 8:00pm. 

LOCATION: 44 Glasshouse Road, Collingwood VIC 3065. Gertrude Glasshouse is a wheelchair accessible venue. Visitors with wheelchairs and strollers are recommended to arrive via Rokeby Street.

Image: Fayen d'Evie, Troy McConnell, Sophie Takách and Prue Lang, 2016.  [...] {...} [...] handovers + translations. Phase 1. FdE, TmC, ST, with Terry Foley and Bryan Phillips.  Shared action involving objects / hide / feel of kelp, shammy, wet sponge. Photo credit: Pippa Samaya

Léuli Eshraghi and Discipline Journal, in association with Gertrude Contemporary, present a talk by visiting Musqueam First Nation curator Jordan Wilson:

What’s in it for us? A First Nation’s Collaboration with Two Museums

Date and Time: Tuesday 18 October, 6pm
Location: Main Gallery, Gertrude Contemporary

Jordan Wilson will talk about the multi-site c̓əsnaʔəm, project on the Musqueam village underneath Vancouver, and his experiences as a contributing Indigenous curator. He will also focus on his work at MOA since then, focusing on the challenges of collaboration.

Jordan Wilson is a Vancouver-based emerging curator and writer. He is of mixed European-Indigenous ancestry and is a member of the Musqueam First Nation. He holds a Masters of Arts in Anthropology and a Bachelor of Arts in First Nations Studies, both obtained at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Jordan has spent time abroad researching and receiving training at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, the University of Tromsø in the Sápmi region of arctic Norway, and at the Indian Arts Research Center at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. More recently, he was a co-curator of the community-based exhibit c̓əsnaʔəm, the city before the city, at the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA). Wilson is currently a Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal Curator-in-Residence at MOA.

TarraWarra Biennial 2016: Endless Circulation Lecture Series

Date and Time: Thursday 29 September, 6–7.30pm
Location: Main Gallery, Gertrude Contemporary: 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC

Gertrude Contemporary is thrilled to host the third free lecture in the TarraWarra Biennial 2016: Endless Circulation Lecture Series. Co-presented with TarraWarra Museum of Art and Discipline. 

This joint lecture, Gossip and its Minor Discourses, will bring together two distinct but related research projects. The first is Andrew Brooks’s recent and ongoing work on disruptive/interruptive speech acts and their efficacy as aesthetico-political gestures in a moment (such as ours) of sustained crisis. The second is Astrid Lorange’s new work to do with the relationship between language and contemporary art—specifically, to do with the way that language functions in work ‘as’ a poetics and can be read as poetry in a meaningful sense (meaningful, that is, for practice in a post-digital media environment). Together, the lecture will consider a particular disruptive/interruptive speech act—gossip—and the kinds of informal, off-hand, unofficial, backchannelled, paratextual and alternatively-circulated forms of affect and information that accompany a large-scale event and its networks of distribution. It will read recent political theory, art criticism and specific works by artists and writers.

Astrid Lorange is a writer, editor and teacher from Sydney. She lectures at UNSW Art and Design, where she researches writing and its relationship to contemporary art. She runs the talk series Conspiracy at Minerva Gallery, Sydney. Her book How Reading is Written: A Brief Index to Gertrude Stein was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2014. Poetry books include Eating and Speaking, Minor Dogs, one that made it alike and Pathetic Tower. Other work has been published in Das Superpaper, Artlink, un Magazine, Seizure, Jacket and Cordite, and exhibited at 107 Projects and 55 Sydenham Rd, Sydney and Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne. Lorange regularly speaks, performs, organises and arranges at galleries and festivals around Australia, such as the recent group show Hell Broth (co-curated with Vaughan O’Connor) at Firstdraft, Sydney, featuring works from emerging artists, designers and writers.

Andrew Brooks is a Sydney-based artist, writer, curator and organiser. His work explores the politics of systems and contemporary aesthetics in the extended age of crisis, and takes the form of texts, installations, performances, lectures and sound recordings. He is a co-director of Firstdraft Gallery, and a former curator of the NOW now Festival of Exploratory Art. He has performed and/or exhibited in Germany, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Most recently, he was part of the Biennale of Sydney’s Bureau of Writing project.

For more information about TarraWarra Biennial 2016: Endless Circulation, click here.

Gertrude Contemporary is thrilled to be one of the presenting partners for TarraWarra Biennial 2016: Endless Circulation Special Lecture Series, along with Discipline and TarraWarra Museum of Art.

Tuesday 23 August 2016, 6pm
Speaker: Charles Green
Location: NGV Clemenger Auditorium, National Gallery of Victoria, St Kilda Road, Melbourne VIC.

Wednesday 14 September 2016, 6pm
Speaker: Dr Chari Larsson 
Location: Gertrude Contemporary, 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC.

Thursday 29 September 2016, 6pm
Speakers: Astrid Lorange and Andrew Brooks 
Location: Gertrude Contemporary, 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC.

Sunday 23 October 2016, 2pm
Speaker: Chris McAuliffe 
Location: TarraWarra Museum of Art, 311 Healesville-Yarra Glen Road, Healesville VIC.

Saturday 29 October 2016, 2pm
Speakers: Tina Baum and Léuli Eshraghi
Location: Blak Dot Gallery, 33 Saxon Street, Brunswick VIC.

TarraWarra Biennial 2016: Endless Circulation opens on Friday 19 August. For more information about the TarraWarra Biennial click here.

There will be a fantastic schedule of public programs on the first full day of the exhibition, Saturday 20 August at TarraWarra Museum of Art. See the details here. 

Image: Masato Takasaka, Another Propositional Model for the Everything Always Already-made Wannabe Studio Masatotectures Museum of Found Refractions 1994-2014 (r)eternal return to productopia- Don't get MADA get even MADA PHD remix), 2014 Installation view, MADA Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne Mixed media, dimensions variable.
Courtesy of the artist and Studio Masatotectures. Photography credit: Emily Taylor

UPDATE: Click here to listen to the recording of Beyond Rhetoric.

Date: Saturday 24 September 2016
Time: 12–2pm
Location: Gertrude Contemporary, 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC 3065
Cost: Free, but bookings essential. Book your free tickets here.

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to be hosting 'Beyond Rhetoric', a forum on gender + curating in partnership with National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), The University of Melbourne and MADA, Monash University.

This forum will explore the role of the contemporary curator in light of the findings of the CoUNTess Report on gender equality in the arts.

No longer bound by institutional space and often working independently, contemporary curating is a creative act. Curators are seen as the drivers of artistic and critical discourse creating opportunities for intersections between disciplines, practices, audiences and exhibition making.

The panel will question and discuss if a gendering of opportunities occurs, contemporary curatorial approaches within the broader arts infrastructure, and what meaningful action looks like beyond rhetoric.

This forum will be chaired by Dr. Rebecca Coates, curator, writer, lecturer and Director of Shepparton Art Museum (SAM). 

Speakers:  
Virginia Fraser – artist, writer, editor and curator
Camila Marambio – curator and PhD candidate at Monash Art Design and Architecture
Kelly Gellatly – Director of The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne
Elvis Richardson – artist and author of CoUNTess
Patrice Sharkey – Director of West Space.

This event is supported by The Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS).

Click here to view the media release.

ROOM 301: GERTRUDE CONTEMPORARY + SPRING 1883

Location: Hotel Windsor, 111 Spring Street, Melbourne.
Dates: 17–21 August, 
Performers: Deanne Butterworth, Atlanta Eke, Rebecca Jensen, Bridie Lunney, Renny Kodgers, The Telepathy Project. 

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to present Room 301, a performance program developed for Spring 1883 that will take place on site at the Hotel Windsor from 17–21 August.

Titled after the hotel suite in which the performance program will unfold, Room 301 brings attention to the work of artists, dancers and choreographers working within movement, the body and participation-oriented practices. 

With new works developed in response to the unique context of a hotel room through which the public can freely enter or leave, Room 301 is both a site and framework for considering intimacies, tensions, liberties and displacement that the hotel plays host to everyday.

Throughout the duration of Spring 1883, Room 301 will present an eveolving program of encounters within the hotel suite as a series of private moments rendered public with performances transplanted from the gallery, theatre and dance studio.

The participating artists, dancers and choreographers include: Deanne Butterworth, Atlanta Eke, Rebecca Jensen, Bridie Lunney, Renny Kodgers, The Telepathy Project.

Schedule

Wednesday 17 August 2016

5 – 6:30pm Atlanta Eke 

6.30 – 7:15pm Deanne Butterworth

7:15 – 8:00pm Rebecca Jensen

Thursday 18 August 2016

1 – 2pm Shelley Lasica

3  – 5pm Brooke Stamp

Friday 19 August 2016

12 – 6pm Bridie Lunney

Saturday 20 August 2016

1 – 1:30pm The Telepathy Project

2 – 2:45pm Deanne Butterworth

3 – 3:30pm The Telepathy Project

4.30 – 6pm Rebecca Jensen

Sunday 21 August 2016

1 – 4pm Renny Kodgers

All times are indicative and somewhat fluid.

Room 301 has been developed for Spring 1883 by Gertrude Contemporary.

LOCATION: HOTEL WINDSOR, 111 SPRING STREET, MELBOURNE VIC 3000.
OPEN: 10am–5pm daily. Performance times will vary throughout each day. 

Carla Macchiavello: ‘We were always fueguinos’ and Christy Gast: ¿'Onde va la lancha? 

Date: Wednesday 13 July 2016 
Location: Gertrude Contemporary, Studio 18 (upstairs)
Time: 6pm for a 6.30pm start, finishing approximately at 8.30pm.

Discipline, Ensayos, and Gertrude Contemporary are pleased to present, ‘We were always fueguinos’ a lecture by art historian, Carla Macchiavello and ¿'Onde va la lancha?  a performance by artist, Christy Gast. The evening will be convened by Camila Marambio.

Cala Macchiavello will present a talk exploring how the fluctuating appropriations and reenactments made by Chilean artists of images of Tierra del Fuego since the 1970s question identity, violence, and sovereignty. In the midst of the military dictatorship, the bodies and landscapes of Tierra del Fuego and the southernmost regions of Chile were imagined by several artists as the margin incarnated—an ambiguous border inside and outside the nation where a battle of inscriptions took place. During the transition to democracy in Chile, the images of fueguinos’ bodies and southern landscapes continued to be appropriated as signs of internal colonialism and a globalised yet marginal national identity. Today they still act as signs of contested identities and haunting memories of a violent past. 

¿'Onde va la lancha? is a 25-minute lecture-performance by New York–based artist, Christy Gast. Gast provides a live voice-over for a video projection that was filmed in the fjords of Tierra del Fuego. We find ourselves inside an artisanal fishing boat during a storm, its creaking and rocking provides the rhythm for a song; the audience joins in. We are under water with a whale. The whale whispers, we learn its song. We are underwater collecting shellfish; we sing the forgotten song of the west wind. The lecture begins as a conventional artist's talk, but as the camera dives below water the tone changes—the audience and the artist are immersed in the world of the fjord and must come to terms with its inhabitants, past and present. 

Biographies:

Carla Macchiavello is an art historian who works with Latin American contemporary art, performance, video, and the relations between art, politics, and performative practices. She has published articles and essays on contemporary Chilean and Latin American art since the 1970s with an emphasis on artistic practices aimed at social change. After receiving a PhD in Art History and Criticism from Stony Brook University, New York in 2010, she worked as Assistant Professor in Art History at Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, and since 2015 she has been an Assistant Professor in Art History at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, New York. She has curated exhibitions on recent Latin American art and formed part of curatorial and editorial committees, including La Otra 2011 (Bogotá), the journal Cuadernos de Arte of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Seismopolite, and Más allá del fin/Beyond the End for Ensayos, an art and science program in Patagonia. For more information click here.

Christy Gast is an artist based in New York whose work across media reflects her interest in issues of economics and the environment. Gast’s work stems from extensive research and site visits to places that she thinks of as ‘contested landscapes.’ These range from beaver-ravaged sub-Antarctic forests, to a mountain in Phoenix undergoing a politicised name change, to the extensively engineered canals and dikes around Lake Okeechobee that divert water from the Everglades. She is interested in places where there is evidence of conflict in human desires, and she traces, translates or mirrors those conflicts through her art practice. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Performa, Artists Space, Harris Lieberman Gallery and Regina Rex in New York; the Perez Art Museum of Miami, Bass Museum of Art, de la Cruz Collection, Locust Projects, Casa Lin and Gallery Diet in Miami; as well as Mass MoCA, the American University Museum, L.A.C.E., High Desert Test Sites, Centro Cultural Matucana 100 and the Kadist Foundation Paris. 

Image: Christy Gast, ¿'Onde va la lancha?, 2016. Video still (rough seas). 

Please note this event is only accessible via stairs.

Ua numi le fau - Public Programs 

4 MAY 7.30–8.30PM
Yuki Kihara ‘A Study of a Samoan Savage’
Institute for Postcolonial Studies IPCS
78–80 Curzon St, North Melbourne
Entry: $5 waged, $3 unwaged, members free.

5 MAY 12.30–1.30PM
Yuki Kihara ‘Vision of Salome’
VCA Artforum
School of Art, Victorian College of the Arts
254 St Kilda Road, Southbank
Entry: Free

5 MAY 4.30–5.30PM
Yuki Kihara on ‘A Study of a Samoan Savage’
Gender Studies Series,
Old Quad-G18 (Cussonia Court Room 2)
Building 150
The Univeristy of Melbourne, Grattan St, Parkville.
Entry: Free

18 MAY 1–2PM
Dale Harding ‘Cultural Safety as Research
Methodology’
MADA Artforum
G104, Monash University Art Design and Architecture
(MADA)
900 Dandenong Rd, Caulfield East.
Entry: Free

24 MAY 6–8PM
Film Screening and Q&A with Frédéric Nauczyciel
Gertrude Contemporary
200 Gertrude St, Fitzroy
Entry: Free

25 MAY 1–2PM
MADA Art Forum Lecture by Frédéric Nauczyciel
Monash University Art Design and Architecture
900 Dandenong Rd, Caulfield East
Entry: Free

26 MAY 12.30–1.30PM
Léuli Eshraghi and Frédéric Nauczyciel
VCA Artforum
School of Art, Victorian College of the Arts
254 St Kilda Rd, Southbank
Entry: Free

Ua numi le fau is curated by Léuli Eshraghi, and developed through Next Wave’s Emerging Curators Program with Gertrude Contemporary for Next Wave Festival 2016

Art historian Rex Butler wrote the following piece in response to Jamie O'Connell's recent exhibition at Gertrude Contemporary, More day than Beyonce.

Download essay here.

JAMIE O'CONNELL: AGAINST GRAVITY

In 2014 the highly regarded but relatively obscure art historian Jonathan Crary released his 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, a zeitgeist-capturing book about the way that, in an age of the internet and labour precarity, we have lost our ability to switch off. We are now all on 24-hour call, living in a state of perpetual alert, best expressed – not only physically but poetically – by the thought that our lights are permanently on, that we are no longer able to turn them off and go to sleep. For to sleep is to be lost or to lose time, to fall behind, to drop out, to become unknown, not only to ourselves but more importantly in a world of mobile phones and twitter trendings to others as well. Not only the world but we ourselves, no matter where we live, are now permanently awake, switched on, unable to do anything but carry on the way we began, our faces held up against the light. As Crary puts it in a resonant turn of phrase: “An illuminated 24/7 world without shadows is the final capitalist mirage of post-history, of the end of otherness that is the motor of historical change”.

What more powerful an expression of this ethos of permanent illumination than that world-spanning figure of self-made success and inexhaustible energy, the American pop singer Beyonce, as embodied by the adage “You have the same number of hours in the day as Beyonce”, now available on – what else? – a coffee mug, precisely full of all those artificial substances that will keep you up longer, working harder, making more of yourself? The coffee cup with its lettering is reproduced as a tall stack of posters almost like a religious icon, intended to be taken away by the spectators, in Jamie O’Connell’s recent show at Gertrude Contemporary, More Day than Beyonce. Indeed, the poster can even be folded over on itself to leave just red fingernails gripping the cup, which has now become a door, looking not unlike one of those photo-collages of Russian Constructivism, reminding us that the historical avant-garde was itself always part of this productivism, this maximal use of time and resources, as though these were ends in themselves, in an “accelerationism” equally shared by Communism and capitalism.

The other work in the show is much the same – although it is much more elaborately expressed. We see in a series of large-scale photographs a group of men and women holding a motorbike up off the ground on a wooden support, almost as if it were a religious procession. But what exactly is it they are doing? What could be the point of this strange ceremonial? O’Connell is in fact enacting in a first unrealised form the utopian project of one day racing this motorbike on a runway at Svalbard, located on a Norwegian archipelago deep in the Arctic Circle and covered with almost year-round permafrost. (O’Connell has done his research and found out that Gertrude St in Fitzroy is the same length and orientation as the runway, so his worshippers were carrying the bike the same height above the road as the runway in Svalbard is deep in the ground.) It is at this attenuated latitude, apparently, that a rider on a good enough bike is able to travel at sufficient speed against the turning of the earth that they are able to remain in effect still, their shadow staying immobile under the gaze of the farway sun. It means that the earth is rushing by in a blur under the wheels of an unmoving motorbike, or put otherwise that the motorbike has to go at something like 300 mph counter-clockwise in order to remain perfectly motionless.

It is a beautiful emblem of the utter pointlessness of art, so far ahead of the rest of the world in consuming all of that energy while remaining in the same spot. But perhaps in another way art forms a kind of Archimedean point, a pivot or fulcrum around which everything turns and from where we can reflect as though in a magical bubble upon all of that relentless activity around us. And something of this utopian, restorative power of art is to be seen in another of O’Connell’s works, the first one of his I came across, which formed part of his Honours project at Monash University, in which – just as implausibly as riding a motorbike at the speed of the turning of the earth down an Arctic runway – O’Connell recovered a fragment of a meteorite that once fell to Earth during the Ice Age and that he now seeks to send back into space using one of those new commercial flights that promise to put their passengers into orbit. From meteorite to meteor – does art not trace something of the same trajectory, allowing us to float free, if only for a moment, from the weight of the world below us?

Rex Butler

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to announce the appointment of two new roles. Mark Feary will take on the role of Artistic Director, while Christine Tipton will take on the role of Director – Business and Operations. The appointment of these two new roles coincides with the departure of Gertrude’s current Director, Emma Crimmings.

For the last thirty years, Gertrude Contemporary has been instrumental in supporting artists within Australia, and has built a worldwide reputation as an influential centre for experimental contemporary art. As we prepare for our upcoming move to a new location, these new roles will be at the heart of our continued position as a highly regarded and integral part of the Australian arts community. 

Director Emma Crimmings, who will be leaving to take up the role of Assistant Director at Artbank in Melbourne, has played a significant role in the progress of the institution’s history. Emma’s vast experience across artistic disciplines, alongside her fundraising abilities working with the Board of Management, have helped to re-invigorate the organisation’s structural and financial stability, building towards a creatively ambitious and sustainable future. During her time as Director, Emma delivered innovative partnerships such as Gertrude Glasshouse, garnered a Churchill Fellowship in order to focus on best practice in artist residency programs and expanded the scope of the organisation’s artistic program to encompass a range of disciplines. In relation to her departure, Emma states: “I feel very confident leaving at this time, with the knowledge that Gertrude is in a much stronger position to deal with future opportunities, due to the achievements of the last two and a half years.”

Mark Feary brings to the role of Artistic Director a wealth of experience in curating, having worked within the visual art sector for fifteen years in a range of contemporary art centres, universities, museums and artist-led initiatives with an emphasis on contemporary art. He joins us following his position as Curator of Exhibitions and Australian Projects at the Australian Centre for Photography, after many years of curating at institutions such as Artspace, the CCP and West Space, as well as maintaining an independent curatorial practice.

With his dynamic breadth of experience throughout art institutions, Mark will be well placed to develop exciting new programs and exhibitions for Gertrude Contemporary, reinforcing our history of fostering emerging artists and experimental art. In response to his appointment, Mark said: “I am very excited to be joining Gertrude Contemporary at this important stage for the organisation at it embarks on a new trajectory. Gertrude is the creative engine room of the visual arts in Australia, its alumni of exhibitors and studio artists is remarkable in its scope and critical contribution to culture and discourse across the past three decades. This significant history is the vital foundation upon which the organisation has been built, but its fundamental asset is not the past; rather what it is yet to contribute to the future of contemporary art and thinking in Melbourne, Australia and in our expanded region.” 

Christine Tipton joins Gertrude Contemporary as a strategic business manager with focused experience in the arts and cultural sector. Her commitment to the arts and cultural sector led to her work as Business and Grants Manager in the Collections, Research and Exhibitions Division at Museum Victoria where she led the Division’s financial management, the development of a successful external funding and collaborative partnerships program, and the delivery of key strategic projects. Prior to this, she worked as a Strategy and Operations Management Consultant for Deloitte, supporting client organisations across a range of industries to make strategic, financially robust business decisions and to grow their business models. 

With the combination of this experience, Christine will be instrumental in maintaining the ambition and development of Gertrude’s continuing role and high regard. She said of her appointment: “This is a pivotal moment in Gertrude Contemporary’s history. In working to transition the organisation to an exciting new home and to build a strong financial future, I am looking forward to supporting Gertrude Contemporary to play its incredible role in nurturing Australia’s artists for generations to come.”

Public Art Project with Fitzroy Primary School and Tully Moore

Event Date: Friday 12 February–Sunday 14 February

Atherton Gardens Reserve, Napier Street Fitzroy

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to present One Hundred Number Tens, a public art project created by the students at Fitzroy Primary School and Studio Artist Tully Moore.

With an emphasis on allowing the students to work with an area that is part of their immediate environment and community, the project will take place on the football pitch centrally located in the Atherton Gardens housing estate, on Napier Street, Fitzroy. This work will be an ephemeral turf painting created by all the students from the school alongside Tully Moore, and aims to activate this particular space in ways yet to be explored, claiming a patch of turf within an area where gardens and open space are limited.

On Friday 12 February, the project will be offically launched by Roberto Colanzi, Mayor of Yarra City Council and Leo Athanasiou, centre midfielder with Melbourne City Football Club National Youth League. They will be joined by players Mohammed Amin and Faisal Aden, who are both Yarra Young residents with local teams, and Wilson Poni, current Yarra Young Citizen of the Year, who has played a leadership role in bringing young people together from across Fitzroy, Collingwood and Richmond housing estates.

The students from Fitzroy Primary School will then participate in soccer matches against one another, wearing the uniforms that they have created in collaboration with Tully Moore. There will be a One Hundred Number Tens Community Cup between youths from local Carlton and Fitzroy teams at 4:30pm. This is a public event and all members of the community are invited to come along and join in.

There will also be an exhibition of flag designs at the City of Yarra Fitzroy Library, 128 Moor Street Fitzroy, on display from Saturday 6 February until Sunday 6 March.

Friday 12 February

10:30am: Launch of project by Roberto Colanzi, Mayor of Yarra City Council, and Leo Athanasiou of MCFC, with Wilson Poni, Mohammed Amin and Faisal Aden.

11-12pm Soccer matches between the students from Fitzroy Primary School.

4:30-6:30pm: One Hundred Number Tens Community Cup between youths from local Carlton and Fitzroy teams.

Saturday 13 February

11am-12:30pm: Soccer clinics with Brunswick Zebras Junior coach Luis Zunga and community league player Wilson Poni. The clinics are for students of middle years. Open to the public, all welcome.

Sunday 14 February

Open to the public for soccer matches and picnics.

This project has been funded by Creative Victoria, City of Yarra Council, the Department of Health and Human Services, Supaturf, Gertrude Contemporary and the Marjorie M. Kingston Trust.

A full media release is available here.

Ancient MSG
Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 December 2015, 5pm
Gertrude Glasshouse
44 Glasshouse Road, Collingwood

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to present a new performance artwork titled Ancient MSG, which premieres at 5pm, Saturday the 19th and Sunday the 20th of December at Gertrude Glasshouse. The roller door will close at 5.10pm sharp.

Ancient MSG is a new experimental and collaborative performance piece by Indonesian artists Ican Harem, Tamara Pertamina, Andreas Siagian and Lintang Radittya, and Australian artists Debris Facility, Lara Thoms, Tarquin Manek and Tim Dwyer. The collective of artists come from diverse backgrounds and art practices, such as live video, synth building, hacker collectives, experimental music, traditional craft, fashion, bio-hacking, sculpture and live art. It has been curated and produced by Kristi Monfries, and forms part of Gertrude Contemporary's ongoing cultural exchange program titled The Independence Project, which, in 2015, has taken place in collaboration with independent Jogjakarta-based curators, Kristi Monfries and Grace Samboh.

Ancient MSG brings to light the mystical and historical revelations of the Javanese prophet, Jayabaya, King of Kediri Java. This king from the twelfth century predicted many truths about the twenty-first century, such as the shift to e-commerce, the push for transgender marriage, the existence of parallel universes, environmental disasters, mistrust of religion, and the eternal battle between good and evil forces. Drawing on traditional Javanese systems of belief, this contemporary interpretation of Jayabaya prophesies will be presented within the framework of a subversive new pantomime using song, dance, and live electronic music and video. 

Bookings are essential. Book a ticket to Ancient MSG through Eventbrite here. View the Facebook event here.

Image credit: Lara Thoms, 2015.

Anja Kanngieser
'Listening to the Anthropocene: Sound and Ecological Crisis'
Monday 14 December 2015, 6pm
Gertrude Contemporary

Gertrude Contemporary, Liquid Architecture and Discipline are pleased to present the final lecture in the 'Theories and Histories of Sound' series for 2015 on Monday the 14th of December: 'Listening to the Anthropocene: Sound and Ecological Crisis' by Anja Kanngieser.

This talk explores imaginations of the natural world at a time of accelerating global environmental crisis, in an era currently being defined as the Anthropocene, a geophysical term that 'recognises that human intrusion on the planet’s surface and into the atmosphere has been so extreme as to qualify our time on earth as a specific geological epoch.' It does so through mediums and methods of sound being used contemporaneously by artists, bio-acousticians and scientists to make sense of, and communicate, earth system changes. Mapping out a range of eco-acoustic practices from field recordings to data and geo-sonifications, the talk investigates how such practices seek to delineate, highlight, and/or overcome, distinctions between natural and social, urban and rural, exceptional and everyday. 

This talk argues that these delineations are critical to perceptions of climate change, and its uneven human causations and effects. Fundamental to this investigation is the claim that such delineations affect the ability to listen to, and take care of, the myriad and complex ecosystems of which humans are a part. Grounded in research coming from the geo-humanities, this talk demonstrates that rather than being separate realms, the natural and social are deeply entangled and implicated in one another. As this talk emphasises, sound, as a medium that brings the world into proximity and envelops us, is uniquely placed to approach and communicate these critical, and ever more urgent, entanglements.

Anja Kanngieser is Vice Chancellors Fellow at the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research, with a background in geography and communication studies. Her work focuses on the intersections of political economy and ecology, sound and social movements. She is primarily interested in the ways in which people strategise, antagonise and collaborate to create the living and working conditions they desire. Bringing into dialogue political economic theory with audio practices, she is engaged in the experimentation and invention of sound-based methods in the social sciences. 

Gertrude Contemporary is delighted to announce the 2016 studio artists: Beth Caird, Holly Childs, Josey Kidd Crowe, Adam John Cullen, Rosie Isaac, Sam Martin, Noriko Nakamura and Nik Pantazopoulos. These artists will enter the Gertrude Contemporary Studio Program in 2016 to join the ongoing group of eight artists in residence.

Since its inception in 1983, Gertrude Contemporary's Studio Residency Program has provided professional support and advocacy for many of Australia's leading contemporary artists. The program, which consists of sixteen non-residential studios, is available for early to mid career contemporary artists and is provided in two-year tenures.

Studio Artists are given a unique opportunity to be at the heart of a high calibre network of artists, writers and visiting international curators. The Gertrude Contemporary Studio Residency Program is the only program of its kind in Australia to offer long term studio tenures and many of Australia's preeminent visual artists have significantly benefited from their two-year residencies.

Gertrude Contemporary’s Studio Artists will open their studios to the public for the afternoon of Saturday the 21st of November 2015, from 12 noon until 4:30pm. The annual Open Studios day is an exclusive opportunity to visit the sixteen studios upstairs, view works in progress, and meet with the artists. It complements the annual Gertrude Studios exhibition, which is currently on display.

Gertrude’s current Studio Artists are: Brooke Babington, Ross Coulter, Sarah crowEST, Eric Demetriou, Fayen d’Evie, Søren Dahlgaard, Debris Facility, Hamishi Farah, Helen Grogan, Minna Gilligan, Ry Haskings, Claire Lambe, Adelle Mills, Tully Moore, Sean Peoples, and Danae Valenza.

In Studio 18, a project entitled #banyakbanyak will begin to take shape as part of Gertrude Contemporary's ongoing cultural exchange titled The Independence Project. A series of cross-cultural exchanges between Gertrude Contemporary and colleague organisations, curators and artists throughout Asia, The Independence Project this year is held in partnership with Yogyakarta-based curators Kristi Monfries and Grace Samboh. The project has been unfolding throughout 2015, with iterations in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Sydney, and Melbourne. The artists included in Part 1 were: Tom Nicholson, on residency in Jakarta; and Debris Facility, Raquel Ormella and Lara Thoms in Yogyakarta. Artists included in Part 2 are: Andreas Siagian, Lintang Radittya, Tamara Pertamina, and Ican Harem, who begin a month-long residency at Gertrude Contemporary this Saturday.

Gertrude Contemporary’s Studio Program has provided practical support and professional advocacy for many of Australia’s leading contemporary artists since its inception as an artist studio complex in 1983. The program, which consists of sixteen non-residential studios, is available to emerging and mid-career artists, and is provided for two-year tenures.

Media release available here.
Link to Facebook event here.

Gertrude Contemporary celebrates its 30th anniversary with a special fundraising event on the evening of Friday the 13th of November 2015. As part of the event, we are holding a silent auction with works generously donated by alumni artists: Emily Floyd, Michelle Ussher, Rob McHaffie, Richard Lewer, and Laith McGregor. For details of the works for auction, download the pdf catalogue.

In addition, we are auctioning two Art–Dining Experiences. The first is a dinner for you and your friends at Andrew McConnell's new restaurant, Marion, at 53 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy. This Experience also includes an intimate in-conversation between Virginia Trioli and contemporary Australian artist, Bill Henson. The second Experience is a dinner for you and seven friends at Gertrude Street Enoteca, which includes pre-drinks and a Studio tour at Gertrude Contemporary, accompanied by current Gertrude Contemporary Studio Artists, Claire Lambe and Tully Moore. For more details, download the pdf catalogue.

As per tradition, the Gertrude Edition will be on display at the event. The 2015 Gertrude Edition artist is Jess Johnson, who has produced a set of 55 unique state editions, titled SENSORIUM MACHINE. For more details about Johnson's edition, visit the Editions page of our website, or download the pdf flyer.

Bids for the silent auction are now open, closing at 9pm on Friday the 13th of November. All enquiries to Angela Todorovski at [email protected]

Image: Jess Johnson, SENSORIUM MACHINE, 2015. Design: Yanni Florence.

M-Pavilion presents Consortium: a series of conversations within a series of talks—presented by a coalition of partners who support emerging and experimental art and design practices in Melbourne and beyond. For the first event, Next Wave, Gertrude Contemporary, West Space, RMIT Design Hub and MPavilion get together to consort on invisible hands.

The first consortium event is titled 'Invisible Hnads Make Light Work: Art and Unwaged Labour,' which takes places at 6.15pm on Tuesday the 20th of October 2015. The panel is hosted by Beth Caird, sub-editor of un Magazine, and includes artists Anastasia Klose, Lou Hubbard and Liang Luscombe, writer and artist Aurelia Guo, and writer-academics Eva Birch and Jan Bryant. The panel asks: What kinds of emotional, affective and otherwise-hidden forms of unwaged labour hold up the art industry? To whom is this work relegated? And how can one strike or resist these un-unionised forms of ‘invisible’ labour?

Following the discussion, DJ and artist Lisa Lerkenfeldt will play a selection of music taking inspiration from notions of anachronism and lesser-known female music histories.

More information about the event can be found on M-Pavilion's website here. 

Gertrude Contemporary, Liquid Architecture and Discipline are pleased to present a public lecture by Amelia Barikin. Titled ‘Sound Fossils and Arche-Fossils: Towards a Mineral Ontology of Contemporary Art,’ it is the third lecture in the ‘Histories and Theories of Sound’ series for 2015.

ABSTRACT:
As a material index of acoustic activity, the term ‘sound fossil’ has gained currency in the fields of paleosonics and contemporary art both as a means of accounting for the appearance of the past in the present, and as an embodiment of cosmic time. Drawing upon audible and not so audible projects by a variety of artists including Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson, Pierre Huyghe and Laurent Grasso, this enquiry begins with Roger Callois’ musings on the writing of stones, detours through the accidental discovery of the the sonic record of the Big Bang in New Jersey in 1964, and culminates in a consideration of the relationship between sound fossils and ‘arche-fossils’ (Meillassoux) to sketch out the significance of mineral ontologies to contemporary artistic production.

BIOGRAPHY:
Amelia Barikin is a contemporary art historian currently living in Brisbane, Australia. Her current research interests include time travel, contemporary art, science fiction, historiography, speculative paleontology, chronophobia,  material animism, non-sites, and philosophies of time. She has worked as a writer and curator on numerous exhibitions and arts projects both independently and with broader cultural organisations, most recently with TarraWarra Museum of Art as co-curator of Pierre Huyghe: TarraWarra International 2015 with Victoria Lynn, and has published extensively. Her book Parallel Presents: The Art of Pierre Huyghe was published by MIT Press in 2012, her anthology Making Worlds: Art and Science Fiction, co-edited with Helen Hughes, was published by Surpllus in 2013. She is currently researching the relation between art and science fiction as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Art History at the University of Queensland, where she also teaches.

Image Caption: Melissa Dubbin and Aaron S. Davidson, Making a Record (Diamond, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald), 2009–2014 (detail). Audio interviews, electroplated records, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, 22k gold, and texts contributed by an actress, an artist, a curator, a geologist, a hypnotist, a psychoanalyst, a singer and a writer after contact with the objects. ­Dimensions and configurations variable.

Media release here.

Studio Artist Helen Grogran is exhibiting a sculptural work titled SETTING/RESETTING from Thursday the 8th til Sunday the 11th of October 2015 as part of the Performing Mobilities Exhibition and Symposium, co-presented by RMIT and the Victorian College of the Arts. Helen's work will be reconfigured at intermittent intervals across two spaces: VCA's Margaret Lawrence Gallery, and RMIT's Design Hub.

Image: David Thomas, taking a timeline for a walk, Melbourne, 2015.

Studio Artist Soren Dahlgaard will take part in 'ThoughtLAB-14: Dead Dirt'—a panel discussion about the current and future fertility of the world's soil—this Wednesday the 7th of October at LAB-14, 700 Swanston Street, Carlton.

Other panel members are Lizzie Brown, CEO, Engineers without Borders; Helen Rowe, Principal, CoDesign Studio; and Dr Tony Weatherley, soil scientist, Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Science. This event also includes a live performance by Duo, Alice Bennett and Vincent Giles, of music composed by Vincent Giles based upon soil surrounding Carlton Connect and 50-year-old soil samples provided by Dr Tony Weatherley.

The event is ticketed, and runs from 6–7pm.

Studio Artist Danae Valenza has work in a new exhibition opening Tuesday 22 September, 2015 at the Town Hall Gallery in Hawthorn. Titled 'Eye Score: The Audible Image,' the exhibition 22 September til 1 November 2015. 

Studio Artist Brooke Babington presents a new exhibition with Jethro Harcourt. Titled No Nuisance, it opens next Tuesday the 22nd of September upstairs at The Alderman, located at 134 Lygon Street in Brunswick East.

Studio Artist Tully Moore has a new exhibition, titled The House of FITZSIMON, opening at CAVES this Friday the 18th of September. The exhibition will run until October 10th.

As an extension of Ishmael Marika's Slide exhibition, please join us for a screening of a selection of short film works: Galka; the land rights documentary Wanga Watangumirri Dharuk; and the stop-motion animation featured in Slide.

The films will be screening in Studio 18 at Gertrude Contemporary between 5.30 and 6.30pm on Tuesday the 8th of September. 

An interview with Ishmael about his practice, including his motivations for making Galka, is available here. 

Ishmael is currently a director, editor, and production officer at The Mulka Project in Yirrkala. He has worked on numerous cultural productions for the Yolngu including documentations of dhapi, bapurru, and other ceremonial events. He is best know for his documentary on Yolngu land rights entitled Wanga Watangumirri Dharuk, which has screened at many festivals as well as a private screening with the East Timor President Ramos Horta. He has recently released his second film a drama depicting Yolngu sorcery entitled Galka. This film was launched to standing ovations at Garma 2014.

More information about Ishmael's Slide exhibition, curated by Fayen d'Evie, is available here.

Gertrude Contemporary Studio Artists applications due next Friday 11 September

Since its inception in 1983, Gertrude Contemporary’s Studio Program has provided practical support and professional advocacy for many of Australia’s leading contemporary artists. Gertrude has sixteen low-cost artist studios available for artists living in Melbourne, and is currently accepting applications for the 2016 intake of Studio Artists. These applications are due on Friday the 11th of September by 5.30pm.

General Information
The sixteen non-residential studios located at Gertrude Contemporary are available to emerging and mid-career artists. They range in size from 30 to 72 square metres.

The subsidised monthly rental is $280.* Tenants are required to pay one month's rent in advance, and a bond, which is equivalent to two month’s rent.
*Subject to change. GST inclusive.

Submission Date Studios
For studios becoming available in 2016, please submit applications by Friday 11 September 2015 by 5.30pm. (Applicants will be notified of outcomes by the end of November 2015.)

Eligibility
All visual artists are eligible to apply, provided they are not enrolled in undergraduate or postgraduate study. Applicants must treat studio rental responsibilities as a priority. Successful applicants are chosen on the basis of quality of work, perceived potential, and space requirements.The organisation also attempts to create a balance of media, gender and age in the studio artist community.

Required Information
All submissions and required proposal material should be directed to [email protected]  as either a direct email attachment, or shared to [email protected]  via Dropbox or Google Drive.

1. Completed application form. Use Adobe Acrobat to type into the PDF form and print, or else print and complete by hand
2. One CV (no more than one A4 page)
3. Visual materials (see below)
4. Image details and credits (no more than one A4 page) 

Visual Materials
Please submit work that has been completed in the past two years. Material in excess of the limits below will not be viewed by the committee.

Please supply
1. 12 x images in jpeg format, maximum size 1mb per image
2. 5 minutes (maximum length) digital video, hosted via Youtube or Vimeo, otherwise shared via Dropbox or Google Drive (100mb maximum file size)

Not accepted
Slides, catalogues, photographs, colour photocopies, or any other printed material; VHS tapes; Powerpoint presentations; images saved in a PDF document.

Decisions
Selection is made by the Studio Selection Panel, whose members include gallery staff, a current studio artist, a member of the Board of Management, and two external arts professionals. Applicants will be advised of results in writing. Panel decisions are final and cannot be negotiated.

Enquiries
Address enquiries to the Gallery Manager T (03) 9419 3406 F (03) 9419 2519 or E [email protected] . Please address submissions to: Gertrude Contemporary, 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC 3065, Australia.

Public program for Kate Newby, Always humming: Musical performances by Tim Coster, Nina Buchanan, and Joel Stern—Saturday 29 August 2015, 6pm

To mark the end of Kate Newby’s major, solo exhibition at Gertrude Contemporary Always humming, we have invited three musicians to respond to the work in the space. Tim Coster, Nina Buchanan, and Joel Stern will play one half-hour set each in the gallery on the evening of Saturday the 29th of August, beginning at 6.00pm.

Always humming seeks to create a fluid relation between indoors and ourdoors. Composer Samuel Holloway, who has contributed a 60-minute sound artwork titled High and Tight to the exhibition, referenced field recordings made in the gallery, the back alleyway, and the bustling streetfront. In painting the ceiling a deep cadmium yellow, Newby sought to draw light from outside into the gallery's interiors. On the whole, the exhibition is an exercise in creating an atmospheric experience rather than a series of discrete objects. Its force is anti-climactic, continuous, infectious; what Jennifer Kabat has described as ‘radically slight.’ These qualities and conditions will inform the sets by Coster, Buchanan, and Stern.

Biographies:

Tim Coster (born in Auckland, and living in Melbourne since 2009) performs textural tape and keyboard music. Working as a musician and sound artist, Coster has a particular focus on published audio releases and live performance. He uses a modular synthesizer, audio cassettes, and other electronics to create melodic and layered sound environments. Recent releases include the self-released Gemini cassette, and albums for Australian labels Room 40 (A Moment's Ornament) and Alberts Basement (Waterfront Cities). In 2011 he was commissioned by the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne for NEW11, and has also presented sound installations at Auckland Museum; Light Projects, Melbourne; and High Street Project, Christchurch. In 2014 he was an artist in residence at EMS in Stockholm, and WORM in Rotterdam. Coster will be releasing his first solo vinyl LPResearch and Motion on US label Soft Abuse in late 2015.

Nina Buchanan is a musician and artist from Sydney, now living in Melbourne. She plays with synths and keyboards, with an interest in improvisation and wonky electronic music. She plays in experimental synth band Video Ezy with Del Lumanta, who released a cassette earlier this year on Sydney label Paradise Daily. Nina also makes music for films and other art projects, including the short film MyMy, which has travelled internationally to festivals including Frameline SF 2014, Outfest LA 2014 and Mardi Gras Film Festival 2015.

Joel Stern is a musician, artist and curator based in Melbourne, Australia. His musical performances use analogue electronics, lights and various found sounds and are often improvisation. He is part of the groups Soft Power and Sky Needle, an ensemble described by The Wire’s David Keenan as 'one of the most radically original and self-sufficient performance units in the world.' With Danni Zuvela, Joel is Artistic Director of Liquid Architecture an organisation that presents projects, festivals, performances and situations of the worlds leading artists working with sound. He is cofounder of OtherFilm and The Instrument Builders Project. As a curator, Joel has been responsible for festivals, publications, exhibitions, screenings and concerts in Australia and internationally for over ten years.

Kate Newby, Always humming, 2015, installation view, Gertrude Contemporary. Photo: Christo Crocker.

Public program for Kate Newby, Always humming: I see information around me, a writing workshop hosted by Gwynneth Porter with special guests—Thursday 27 August 2015, 11am–5.30pm

The first of two public programs as part of Kate Newby's Always humming is a writing workshop in the gallery hosted by Gwyn Porter. Writers of all different backgrounds—art criticism, fiction, non-fiction, ficto-criticism, poetry—and levels of experience are invited to spend time in and around the gallery on Thursday the 27th of August (during gallery opening hours) and generate new texts in the company of other writers and a vibrational healer from St Kilda’s The Yellow Room.

Newby’s work has often involved slight written phrases, or utterances, in the spaces she makes, and in the sentence-fragment titles that she writes or gathers from overheard speech. These open-ended ‘scraps of language’ are part of a wider investigation into the way material interventions into a site’s temporal, physical and geographical conditions can be a means of de-programming everyday behaviour and experience.

Newby has long been influenced by the way that blues songs are passed around and passed on—enjoyment was shared, and information was kept alive this way. Those who gather for singing do so for themselves. Participants are encouraged to write freely in scraps and fragments, impressions and sketches, which will later be compiled as a written document of the exhibition itself.

Porter will be joined by Tessa Laird, an artist, teacher and writer with specialist knowledge of the cultural significance of colour; Jan Bryant, writer and educator, who has written extensively on Newby’s work; Holly Childs, author of Danklands and No Limit; and Beth Caird, an artist, writer and current sub-editor of un Magazine.

Gwynneth Porter is a writer and educator currently researching the way in which errant museum visitation appears in literature, and what possible politics these scenes, and fiction, enact. In 2015, she has taught in in art theory at Monash, and from 2006 to 2014 was the editor of Clouds, a visual arts press based in Auckland. Clouds has published Kate Newby’s Incredible Feeling, Tessa Laird’s A Rainbow Reader, and Jan Bryant’s PX: thoughts on painting. Porter’s I Must Explode: art writing and tactical practice was recently published by Endless Lonely Planet.

Kate Newby, Always humming, 2015, installation view, Gertrude Contemporary. Photo: Christo Crocker.

Gertrude Contemporary is proud to announce the launch of a new off-site gallery and project space, Gertrude Glasshouse, which opens to the public on Friday, 24 July 2015 with an exhibition: What noise does a pig make? by Gertrude Studio Artist Tully Moore.

Located in Collingwood just five minutes from the organisation’s Fitzroy headquarters, Gertrude Glasshouse will serve as a transitional space as Gertrude Contemporary moves closer to its anticipated move from the address that gave it its name thirty years ago.

The Glasshouse venture is supported by long-term Gertrude Contemporary patrons Michael Schwarz and David Clouston, who own the new venue. The Fitzroy based architect firm, SIBLING were commissioned to turn the existing building used as storage into a multi-purpose exhibition space. 

In talking about the project Schwarz and Clouston explain that, 'Our hopes are the space will be a joint venture with Gertrude Contemporary for a couple of years supporting contemporary art practice in Australia. It is intended to be available for their transition period from their current premises to their next venture.'

For Gertrude Contemporary, Gertrude Glasshouse is a new and innovative approach in an ever-changing climate in the arts sector that will enable more responsive, nimble programming to complement the exhibitions and artist residency program at the Gertrude Street site.

'Organisations such as Gertrude Contemporary are well positioned to explore new and innovative ways of operating. Gertrude Glasshouse is an inspiring example of how partnerships can drive creative development and increase the capacity of the creative industries. We are particularly excited by the potential this stunning space offers for our Studio Artists to undertake ambitious projects during their residencies at Gertrude,' said Gertrude Contemporary Director, Emma Crimmings.

Gertrude Contemporary is unique in Australia for its combination of studio and exhibition spaces, placing an equal emphasis on the production and presentation of cutting-edge contemporary art. Upstairs from the Gertrude Street galleries lie sixteen artists’ studios, which over the past three decades have provided two-year residencies for some of Australia’s most accomplished artists, including Howard Arkley, Ricky Swallow, David Noonan and Emily Floyd. 

More than just a space in which to work, the Gertrude studios are highly sought after by both emerging and mid-career artists for the opportunities they provide for mentorship, network development and exhibitions both in Australia and abroad.

Gertrude Glasshouse is an extension of the values of Gertrude Contemporary to support the development, production and presentation of new forms of artistic practice.

Inaugural Gertrude Glasshouse Exhibition
Tully Moore – What noise does a pig make?
24 July – 29 August 2015
12 – 5pm Thursday to Saturday
44 Glasshouse Road, Collingwood
gertrude.org.au

Art Talking Melbourne - New Geographies

The Bogong Centre for Sound Culture warmly invites you to the launch of our latest output - a new publication (New Geographies), cd series (Topologies 1) and new website.

New Geographies explores new ways of representing material, spatial and environmental conditions shaping remote regions and communities.  It is part of a series of projects facilitated by the BCSC focusing on the processes and impacts of sustainable energy production; effects of climate change in wilderness areas; ethnographic studies of remote communities; the chronicling of vanishing industrial procedures; and systems of representation used to render natural and built environments.

Topologies 1 presents an overview of commissioned sound works produced for the BCSC since its inception in 2010. Included are compositions by Christophe Charles, Byron Huang-Dean, Rosalind Hall, Geoff Robinson and Michael Vorfeld. This CD is the first of a series that will be regularly produced to highlight the creative research occurring at the BCSC concentrating on the history and ecology of the Australian Alps, and attendant social and environmental issues.

Gertrude Contemporary is proud to announce Léuli Eshraghi as the 2015 Gertrude Contemporary–Next Wave Emerging Curator.

Next Wave’s Emerging Curators Program was established in collaboration with Gertrude Contemporary over fifteen years ago to support emerging curators to develop ambitious, research-driven exhibition projects on site. In 2014, West Space and the Centre for Contemporary Photography joined to extend the Emerging Curators Program; and in 2015,Liquid Architecture and Arts Project Australia also became exhibition partners.

Léuli Eshraghi is an artist, writer, curator and PhD candidate at Monash University Art, Design and Architecture (MADA). His practice is centred on connection to place, indigeneity, memory, erasure, queer possibility, body sovereignty, and multilingual plurality. Léuli holds qualifications in Indigenous Arts Management and Cultural Studies. He is editor of the Oceania Now publication on contemporary art practice for the Contemporary Pacific Arts Festival in Narrm Melbourne, and was Artist in Residence 2015 at Tautai Pacific Arts Trust in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.

Learn more about his work here.

Image: Léuli Eshraghi, 2015. Photograph: David Martin Harris.

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to announce the participants in the 2015 Emerging Writers Program:

- Chelsea Hopper will be mentored by Grace McQuilten
- Sarinah Masukor will be mentored by Jan Bryant
- Amelia Winata, Jack Willet, Jeremy Eaton, Tara Cook, Jon Dale and Audrey Schmidt will be mentored by Rex Butler

2015 marks the tenth anniversary of Gertrude Contemporary's Emerging Writers Program. The Program provides a unique opportunity for emerging visual arts writers nation-wide to develop their writing practice, publish their work, and gain further insight into the field of contemporary art writing through a year-long mentorship with an established art historian, curator or writer.

This year Gertrude has renovated its Emerging Writers Program to be more adaptive to the specific skills, strengths and style of its Emerging Writers. As in previous years, applicants selected for the Program will be paired with a mentor for a period of one year. With their mentors’ help, Emerging Writers will produce two pieces of professional writing for publication, one of which will be a Studio 12 catalogue essay. Moreover, Gertrude has diversified its partner organisations so that Emerging Writers can publish their work in a forum most appropriate to their ambitions. The 2015 partner organisations include, but are not limited to: eyeline, unMagazine, Discipline, West Space Journal,Vault, Dissect, Realtime, Canvas on FBI Radio, and No Brow on 4ZZZ Radio. 

Image: Alex Martinis Roe, Free Associations, 2010, altered installation view, 20 minute durations, masonite, hardwood, tile grouting, acrylic paint, chalk.

Dissect Journal #2 is launching at Gertrude Contemporary

Saturday 27 June
2pm to 4pm 
Studio 18

Saturday June 20
3 - 5pm 
Free 
Studio 18 - Upstairs 

Gertrude Contemporary studio artist Sean Bailey presents LAKES and Armour Group

Gertrude Contemporary–Discipline Lecture #6, 2015
Monday 22 June 2015
6pm for a 6.30pm start
Studio 18, Gertrude Contemporary

JAN BRYANT
‘I plead guilty to the indictment of “avowed optimism”’  

ABSTRACT
What does it take to make art with political intent today? Surely it means retaining a modicum of hope? But what is it to have hope in such dire political times?  Even if we find a way to affirm hopefulness, it doesn’t follow that a way to approach politics will spontaneously rise from it. I am using ‘approach’ here in the double sense of a signpost and a method (a ‘how to speak’ and a ‘how to make’). This double-approach carries with it an understanding that artists have the power and the right to have an encounter with politics today: that is, the ‘power’ in the Agamben-Aristotle sense of having the power to act, whether one exercises it or not, and having the right in the sense that Foucault uses it in his lectures on parrhesia, as the ‘right to speak the truth.’ We remember, though, that such power and such parrhesia carries risks, since artists, speakers, writers, and philosophers must also accept the consequences of their ‘outspokenness.’ The tyrant has the power to react, but not in the sense above, but in a much weaker form (ethically, ontologically) as the power to impose force. Is this where we are today, stuck in the tyrant’s glare?   

This lecture will look at the problematic of how art might approach political questions in its continuing encounter with neo-liberal capitalism.  

RESPONDENT
Daniel Cass

BIOGRAPHIES
Jan Bryant’s teaches art history and theory in Fine Arts at Monash University. Her recent publications are: ‘Adelle Mills,’ ACCA–New15, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2015; ‘Fiona Macdonald at Margaret Lawrence,’ Eyeline, forthcoming in 2015; ‘Et. Al. For the Common Good,’ West, Groenewegje Den Haag, The Netherlands, 2015.

The lecture forms part of a forthcoming book on contemporary approaches to politics and art.

Daniel Cass has many years experience working in green politics and renewable energy. He has advised Greens leaders Bob Brown and Christine Milne, was Communications Manager for Greenpeace Australia Pacific and consulted to Sungevity, Pacific Hydro and Vestas. He has an honours degree in history of science and was Curator of Science and Society at Scienceworks. 
He has written on sustainability for The Guardian, ABC, Fairfax and News Ltd. Dan was a member of the Melbourne art group Damp. He is an honorary associate at Sydney Business School.

'The Expanding and Contracting Universe of Painting'
Roundtable discussion
Tuesday 9 June 2015, 6–8pm
Gertrude Contemporary

‘The Expanding and Contracting Universe of Painting’ is a roundtable discussion about the specificity of contemporary painting practices that are proximal to sculptural and installation practices. Each speaker will present a short statement, followed by an open discussion.

'The Expanding and Contracting Universe of Painting' is the first in a series of discussions about contemporary painting organised by Fayen d'Evie and Liang Luscombe, which will take place at Gertrude Contemporary.

Speakers:
Brooke Babington
Jan Bryant
Gabriel Curtin
Ry Haskings
David Homewood
Helen Johnson
Annika Koops
Nell Pearson
Lisa Radford
Bryan Spier
Nick Selenitsch
Masato Takasaka

Moderator:
Helen Hughes

Link to Facebook event.

A podcast of the event can be found here.

Image: Brooke Babington, No Nuisance (detail), 2015, digital print.

In February 2015, Lara Thoms (Australia) and Wok the Rock (Indonesia) took part in Gertrude Contemporary's ongoing cultural exchange, the Independence Project, this year held in partnership with the independent curators Kristi Monfries and Grace Samboh who are both based in Indonesia. The broad thematic of the 2015 Independence Project is collective, collaborative and interdisciplinary practice. Titled #banyakbanyak, the project is unfolding throughout the course of 2015, with iterations in Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Sydney and Melbourne. Artists included are Tom Nicholson, Dan Bell and Tamara Pertamina, Lara Thoms and Wok the Rock, and Raquel Ormella.

For #banyakbanyak, Thoms collaborated with Yogyakarta-based artist and musician Wok the Rock. Together, Thoms and Wok intitiated a research project on the 1993 Metallica concert at Lebuk Bulus stadium in Jakarta that resulted in a large-scale riot and the banning of heavy metal concerts in Java. Thoms and Wok interviewed numerous people who either attended the 1993 concert or are members of Indonesian Metallica fan clubs. Their project suggests a trajectory from the 1993 riot to the 1998 student reformasi protests right up to the more recent election of Indonesian President Joko Widodo in 2014, a proud metalhead who famously attended an August 2013 Metallica concert in Jakarta. Based on their research, Thoms and Wok have designed merchandise that both commemorates the '93 riot and could be utilised in a new riot—such as energy drinks that double as Molotov cocktails, cigarette lighters, and long-sleeve T-shirts that can also be used as face masks.

Thoms and Wok's work will be presented in two upcoming exhibitions in Australia.

Following this research and responding to 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art’s invitation to create a live performance for 48HR Incident, Wok and Thoms have collaborated with Sydney-based Metallica tribute band, Damage, Inc., who will perform a specially selected playlist of songs, and will operate a merchandise stall with the artists' customised merch. 48Hr Incident is a program of performances, interventions and live actions that runs from the 29th to the 31st of May 2015.

Wok and Thoms will also present an exhibition of their merchandise at Long Division Gallery at School House Studiosin Melbourne for a solo exhibition titled Jakarta Whiplash '93 (re-revisited), which opens on the 4th of June and runs until the 20th of June.

Joe Banks
'Rorschach Audio'
Histories and Theories of Sound, Lecture #5 2015
Wednesday June 3, 6.30pm–8pm
Gertrude Contemporary

Liquid Architecture and the Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA are pleased to present British sound artist and writer Joe Banks in Australia for the first time. On Wednesday June 3 at 6.30pm at Gertrude Contemporary, Banks will deliver a lecture titled 'Rorschach Audio' as part of the ‘Histories and Theories of Sound’ series presented in association with Gertrude Contemporary, Liquid Architecture and Discipline. Banks's lecture is #5 in the 'Histories and Theories of Sound' series that began last year, and has featured lectures by Branden W. Joseph, David Grubbs, Douglas Kahn, and James Parker.

BLURB
In Rorschach Audio: Art and Illusion for Sound, Banks offers a critical account of Spiritualistic and allegedly supernatural Electronic Voice Phenomena (ghost­voice) recordings, tracing the uncanny phenomena back through the histories of art, literature and the little-known audio monitoring work by U.K. wartime intelligence agencies. Banks argues that ‘the earliest form of sound recording technology was not a machine but was written language,’ illustrating the argument via a series of fascinating and bizarre psychoacoustic illusions.

RESPONDENT
Ceri Hann (RMIT)

BIOGRAPHY
Emerging in London in the mid 1990s, Disinformation pioneered creative uses of electromagnetic (radio) noise radiated by live mains electricity, lightning, magnetic storms, high­voltage plasma discharges, industrial, IT and laboratory hardware, railway and metro systems, and the sun. From the beginning, Disinformation’s imagery was strongly driven by research into fields including military research and development, space physics, and psychology of perception and illusion. While other young artists were subscribing to Artforum, Joe was devouring journals on defence electronics and communications psychology. In 2012 he published the book Rorschach Audio: Art and Illusion for Sound exploring the relation between techniques of recording and mechanisms of perception, through figures as diverse as parapsychologist Konstantīns Raudive, artist Jean Cocteau, and the art historian and wartime intelligence eavesdropper E.H. Gombrich. Joe lives in London, near the set of traffic lights which inspired physicist Leo Szilard to conceive the theory of the thermonuclear chain reaction.

Media release available here.

Gertrude Contemporary, the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne and Discipline journal are pleased to present a public lecture by David Raskin, titled ‘Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Inhuman Photographs.’ Raskin’s lecture will take place from 6pm on Wednesday the 20th of May, 2015, in Theatre A of the Old Arts Building at the University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus.

ABSTRACT
In asking why responses to Sugimoto’s photographs turn on a dime from awe to scorn, I suggest that these strange works of art manage to escape human desires. My hope is that by moving the conversation away from entrenched dichotomies such as aesthetics or anti-aesthetics and toward an analysis of the nature of objects and feelings, I can suggest the ethical and practical consequences of inhuman art.

BIOGRAPHY
David Raskin is Mohn Family Professor of Contemporary Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Editor-in-Chief of caa.reviews. He is author of Donald Judd (Yale University Press, 2010), and other scholarly publications, including essays on Noriyuki Haraguchi, Ad Reinhardt, Jo Baer, Olle Baertling, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Carl Andre, and pragmatic aesthetics. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the United States Study Centre, University of Sydney, Australia.

Raskin’s visit to Australia has been supported by the United States Study Centre, University of Sydney.

The Gertrude Contemporary–Discipline Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. Established in April 2013, the series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Invited lecturers speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Image: Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gemsbok, 1982. Gelatin silver print. 41.9 x 54.61 cm. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Media release here.

The Board of Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to announce the appointment of Virginia Trioli as the new Chair of the Board of Management. Trioli is one of Australia’s most respected and recognised journalists, and brings to the organisation a rich knowledge of visual art and its broader role within Australian culture.

Gertrude Contemporary Director Emma Crimmings said, 'We are delighted to welcome Virginia to the role of Chairperson of the Gertrude Board. Virginia was associated with Gertrude in its earliest stages, working alongside founding Director Louise Neri when the organisation launched in the early 1980s. Virginia re-joins Gertrude at a significant moment in our thirty-year history, as we relocate the organisation to a new home that enables us to dramatically expand the capacity and reach of our programs. Virginia’s passion for the arts combined with her strong national profile will prove to be invaluable to an organisation poised to reinvent itself over the next few years.'

In response to her appointment Trioli states, 'I am thrilled to be back at Gertrude after being involved at the very beginning of this important cultural institution. As an independent, practice-based space for emerging and mid-career artists, Melbourne can be very proud of the continuing success of this place. Our move to Collingwood to be part of a new arts precinct is a great vote of confidence by this and previous governments in the importance of local, creative work that can be appreciated by all Australians.'

For thirty years Gertrude Contemporary has been an influential centre for the development and presentation of contemporary visual art, launching the careers of some of the country’s most successful artists and building an international reputation for Australian art. At the heart of the organisation is its unique combination of artist studios and exhibition spaces, which enables an equal emphasis on the production and presentation of contemporary art.

Former Gertrude Studio Artist Emily Floyd, recently the subject of a major solo survey exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, describes the experience of holding a coveted Gertrude Studio as follows; 'Gertrude was an iconic moment. Not just a studio, it was a launching pad into a community of artists, writers and curators who would come to set the agenda for contemporary Australian art.'

Current Board Member Doug Hall AM, Principal Fellow, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, and former Director of the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, said, 'Virginia is recognised as one of Australia’s most distinguished cultural broadcasters. Across many artistic disciplines she has reported on and critiqued exhibitions, organisations and institutions. Her interviews have become an important chronicle. This tremendous experience will be invaluable as Gertrude begins its new future.'

Currently a co-host of ABC News Breakfast, Virginia Trioli is a two-time Walkley Award winner, who started her journalism career at The Age. She has been a columnist for The Bulletin magazine and has hosted the drive shift on 774 ABC Radio in Melbourne and the morning slot on 702 ABC in Sydney. Virginia has also been a regular panelist on the ABC's Insiders program and a presenter of the Artscape 'In Conversation With' series, in which she interviewed some of the biggest names in music, film, theatre and the arts.

An honours graduate in Fine Arts of the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University, she did post-graduate studies at New York University from 1993 to 1994.

Virginia is the author of Generation F: Sex, Power and the Young Feminist published in 1996, a riposte to Helen Garner's First Stone. In 1995 she won Australian journalism's highest honour, the Walkley Award, for her business reporting, and in 1999 won the Melbourne Press Club's Best Columnist award, The Quill. In 2001 she again won a Walkley Award for her interview with former defence minister Peter Reith over the Children Overboard issue. 

6pm, Thursday 7 May 2015
Studio 18, Gertrude Contemporary 

This reading group on laziness is held in conjunction with Hao Guo's current Slide exhibition—2 art habits, an occasionally changing work, intended to relaunch a habit of art practice out of a daily habit of phone tapping. The reading group will focus on two texts that espouse the merits of laziness and waiting. We will read Zagreb-based artist Mladen Stilinovic’s essay 'The praise of laziness', and the chapter ‘Penelope’s Insomnia’ from Lewisburg-based author Harold Schweizer’s book On Waiting. 

In our post-Fordist era, in which the borders of work and leisure have been completely eroded, 'The praise of laziness' discusses the importance of non-production within an artistic practice. Complementary to this, the selected chapter from On Waiting considers the relationship between narrative and the act of waiting through an examination of the character Penelope, who spends years waiting for Odysseus in Homer’s Odyssey. Schweizer draws together the parallels between the act of reading, writing and waiting, ruminating on the delays and detours that are embedded in these processes. Schweizer describes the way that: 'Literary narratives teach us how to come to the end of waiting and then to wait again, how to weave and unweave our time, how to compose and revise our life. They teach us also that no end, no object of waiting can fulfill our waiting…' Building on these ideas surrounding passing time, 'Penelope's Insomnia' also meditates on the gendered aspects of waiting as rendered in this ancient tale, incorporating responses from a whole range of authors in relation this complex female protagonist and her struggle in delaying her fate.

The convenors, Fayen d'Evie and Liang Luscombe, thank Christina Li for recommending Schweizer's On Waiting. Christina recently launched a collection of stories Stationary, co-edited with Heman Chong, conceived as an opportunity for invited artists and writers to 'take stock in a suspended moment that provides a recess from productive practice.' Published by Spring Workshop, the collection is only being distributed via a gift economy, and features contributions by Quinn Latimer, Nav Haq, Clifford Irving, George Szirtes, Fayen d'Evie and others. Visit www.stationarystories.com to sign up to receive a copy by mail.   

Visiting Curator Misal Adnan Yildiz — Director of Artspace, New Zealand — will give a public lecture at Gertrude Contemporary on Tuesday the 21st of April at 6pm. Yildiz will discuss his current program at Artspace focusing on relationships between artistic research, exhibition methodology, and public audience. 

Yildiz’s lecture is presented in partnership with the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane in association with Curatorial Practice, Monash Art Design and Architecture (MADA). 

BIOGRAPHY
Adnan Yildiz is a graduate of Boaziçi University, Istanbul, in Psychology and Educational Sciences, and later Sabanci University, Istanbul, where he completed his Master of Arts degree in Visual Art and Visual Communication Design. From 2006 to 2008 he participated in the travelling curatorial research program Curatorlab/Konstfack in Stockholm, and in 2009 he worked as a researcher in Valand Art Academy’s Independent Study Program (Gothenburg). Yildiz was a nominee for the ICI Independent Curatorial Vision Award in 2012. In the summer of 2013 he realised the exhibition A History of Inspiration organised within the scope of Nouvelles Vagues at the Palais de Tokyo. During this time he also worked as a curatorial collaborator of the 13th Istanbul Biennial. Together with Michael Wang and Evelyn Simonds, Yildiz shares the Curate Award 2014, a global prize that recognises new curatorial talent, awarded by Fondazione Prada and the Qatar Museums Authority. 

Image: Portrait of Misal Adnan Yildiz in front of Lawrence Weiner, AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE, 2015. Artspace carpark. Photo: Leah Mulgrew. 

Media release avilable here.

Chapter One at Warnambool Art Gallery

This collaborative exhibition will place the WAG collection in the hands of four leading contemporary artists: Patrick Pound, Richard Lewer, The Telepathy Project and Noriko Nakamura. Each artist has been invited to create a new commission in response to the gallery’s collection. Curated by Emily Cormack, this exhibition is the first of three exhibitions Gertrude Contemporary will be presenting across Victoria under the aegis of From The Collection: Gertrude Regional Residencies in 2015.

Delving into the wealth of strangeness and wonder that can be found in Victoria’s regional art gallery storerooms, From The Collection is a platform for contemporary artists to imagine new possibilities for museum objects. This process allows artists to remove the objects from their current contexts and histories, and to then uncover new narratives or extend latent narratives within each art collection.

The first in this exhibition series, held at WAG throughout April and May of 2015, is driven by the extraordinarily wide-ranging wunderkammer-like assortment of objects that makes up the WAG collection. From x-rays of royal hands, to jars of python eggs and assorted Zulu artefacts, the WAG collection offers an enlightening insight into the aspirations and curiosities of early Warrnambool settlers. The potential stories are myriad, the voices and gestures profound, and each of the commissioned artists has unearthed, extrapolated or even imagined some of these stories in their making of new work.

For example, Patrick Pound’s major new work, entitled There not there, brings together a variety of objects from the collection that express the simultaneous co-existence of presence and absence. From a piece of Irish turf long ago transported and long since held in the Warrnambool Museum, to a painting of the unfinished span of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, this work brings to light a vast array of things that are found to stand in for the otherwise absent. The Telepathy Project (Sean Peoples and Veronica Kent), on the other hand, has drawn on the romance and tragedy of the local love story of Eva and Tom for their commission. This rumoured and unlikely love match between a ship’s apprentice and a first-class lady — sole survivors of the shipwrecked Loch Ard in 1878 — is a significant tragedy that still resonates along the South West coast of Victoria. The Telepathy Project has searched the WAG collection creating unlikely love stories and hopeful flirtations between portraits of those whose paths would otherwise have never crossed.

The four distinct projects in From the Collection: Chapter One each redisplay familiar objects from a regional collection and imbue them with fresh possibilities. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity for audiences to reconsider their own regional collections, opening up new pathways for engagement and exploration, and highlighting the collection as a site of wide open imagining.

4 April – 11 June 2015
Warrnambool Art Gallery
26 Liebig Street, Warrnambool
VIC 3280

Boulevard
Curated by Centre for Style
Tuesday 17 March – Thursday 19 March 2015 

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to present Boulevard, a three-day, multi-disciplinary project by Centre for Style comprising an exhibition, performance art, poetry readings, music, and fashion events. Each of the artworks, acts, poems and performances considers how bodies move through space, such as down a street or boulevard. The multiple components of Boulevard work together to articulate the expanded field in which contemporary fashion circulates. More information here.

Studio Artist Bridie Lunney has collaborated with choreographer Melanie Lane on dance work Merge, premiering March 18-22, Arts House Meat Market, as part of Dance Massive.

Created in collaboration also with visual artist Ash Keating and renowned UK electronic musician Clark (Warp), Merge offers a poetic discourse on humans’ co-existence with inanimate objects in our man-made universe. Read more and book here. 

Studio artist Fayen d'Evie has launched her new exhibition Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate… 

Through fictional texts and hybrid paintings, this exhibition reflects on visual assumptions of value in the visual arts and other cultural manifestations that depend intrinsically on visual appearance. This is the first public outcome of a new body of work developed with blind collaborators, considering epistemological and aesthetic opportunities from this perspective.

6th March - 2nd April

Readings:

March 5 2015, 6:30pm (Exhibition Opening)
The Museum of Holograms and O-
by Fayen d’Evie and Janaleen Wolfe

March 21 2015, 2:00pm
Double or Nothin’
By Fayen d’Evie and Ben Phillips

'THE CZECH MAGNATE, a circular’ is a radio play written by the American science fiction author and art critic Mark von Schlegell ‘in the service of David Egan’, especially for the occasion of his current exhibition Actually Energy Help Light at Gertrude Contemporary. The play will be performed and recorded live in the central gallery at Gertrude on the evening of Tuesday 10 March 2015, beginning promptly at 6.45pm. Vocals performed by Sophia Brous, Tarquin Manek, and Trevelyan Clay; sound effects by Joel Stern.

Free, no bookings required. More info here.

'The Number of the Collective Beast' is a reading group hosted by Liang Luscombe and Fayen d'Evie to accompany Liang's current exhibition in Slide, which has been curated by Fayen. It will take place on Thursday the 12th of March 2015 at 5pm in the gallery. For more information and a link to the reading material by Matteo Pasquinelli, click here.

The second Gertrude Contemporary–Discipline lecture for 2015 will be given by Patricia Reed on Tuesday the 3rd of March, at 6pm for a 6.30pm start. Reed’s lecture is co-presented with MADA — Monash University Art Design and Architecture. Her paper is titled 'Diagrammes and Futurity', and will include a response by Sean Dockray. More information about Patricia's lecture can be found here.

Fayen d'Evie's writing is included in a new collection of texts edited by Christina Li and Heman Chong, published by Spring Workshop. Other contributors include Quinn Latimer, Nav Haq, and Clifford Irving. The book is only being distributed by a gift economy; if you would like to be mailed a free copy, sign up at www.stationarystories.com.

2015 Exhibition Program

2015 marks the 30th anniversary of Gertrude Contemporary. To celebrate, a key focus of the 2015 exhibition program is the work of past and current Studio Artists, several of whom have been invited to stage major solo or curated exhibitions. This year, exhibitions will run longer, for six weeks as opposed with four, and three of these exhibitions will occupy all of the galleries at Gertrude Contemporary, including Studio 12. The year closes with reflections on the diverse array of artistic practices that have defined Gertrude's history, with an exhibition of past and current Studio Artists curated by the alumnus Christian Thompson.

In addition, Gertrude Contemporary will launch a number of new initiatives, including a new off-site project space in Glasshouse Lane, Collingwood, and a series of online artwork commissions. Meanwhile, the latest instalment of Gertrude's international cultural exchange program begins this month, with artists Dan Bell, Tom Nicholson, Raquel Ormella, and Lara Thoms all undertaking residencies in Indonesia. This project has been organised in collaboration with independent Jogjakarta-based curators Grace Samboh and Kristi Monfries. Additionally, a series of collaborative exhibitions in regional centres featuring Gertrude alumni will take place throughout the year under the banner of From the Collection: Gertrude Regional Residencies. These exhibitions will be staged in Warrnambool, Morewell, and Benalla. Finally, 2015 will see the realisation of the first round of the Artbank–Gertrude Commissions, including new works by The Telepathy Project, Tully Moore, Claire Lambe, and Charlie Sofo.

Ganybu, Marrnyula Mununggurr
Actually Energy Help Light, David Egan
Sarah crowEST (Studio 12)
30 January – 14 March

Yolngu artist Marrnyula Mununggurr initiates a new partnership between Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Centre in Yirrkala and Gertrude Contemporary by presenting an exhibition of over 250 small barks and undertaking a Studio 18 residency. Melbourne artist David Egan holds his first major solo exhibition, presenting several different bodies of paintings and text, which explore themes of concealment, movement, and deflection. Mununggurr and Egan will speak about their work in a public discussion on Saturday 31 January. Mununggurr will also give demonstrations of her painting process and Yolngu string figures. On Tuesday 10 March, there will be a live performance and audio recording of a radio play written by American science fiction writer and art critic Mark von Schlegell, produced especially for Egan's exhibition. More information on these exhibitions here.

Miss Universal, Claire Lambe and Atlanta Eke
Alex Vivian
Søren Dahlgaard (Studio 12)
27 March – 9 May

Studio Artist Claire Lambe collaborates with dancer and choreographer Atlanta Eke, the recent winner of the Keir Choreographic Award (2014). Drawing upon their mutual interest in mediations of the body, Lambe and Eke will explore different environments tensioned by the interplay between transformative materials (including live dance and film) and static forms. Former Studio Artist Alex Vivian presents a new solo exhibition of sculptures, paintings and installation that, by contrast, engages materials inscribed by traces of an absent body. These include modifying worn clothes and 'pre-loved' toys found in op-shops, and painting on pillow cases and bed sheets that have absorbed years of bodily contact.

Octopus 15, Lost and Profound, curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham
22 May – 4 July 

The 15th edition of Gertrude Contemporary's flagship curatorial exhibition, Octopus, is curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham. Lost and Profound considers the interface between obsolescent and new media technologies, and explores the role of memory in this increasingly schizophrenic landscape of mass recordings. Dr Daniel Mudie Cunningham is a Sydney-based curator, artist and writer. He is currently the Assistant Director and Head Curator at Artbank, and Editor of Sturgeon. 

Kate Newby
10 July – 22 August

New Zealand artist Kate Newby will present a large-scale solo exhibition across all the galleries in addition to an off-site project, and will undertake a residency in Studio 18 concomitantly. Newby is renowned for her architectural and atmospheric interventions, which art critic Jennifer Kabat has described as 'radically slight'.

The Documentary Turn
11 September – 24 October

Launching a joint initiative between Melbourne's Centre for Contemporary Photography and Gertrude Contemporary, this exhibition is the first in an ongoing series exploring crossovers between documentary film and contemporary art. The exhibition is curated by Emma Crimmings and will premiere a new work by acclaimed Australian filmmaker Amiel Courtin-Wilson.

Studio Alumni 
6 November – 19 December

In celebration of the thirty-year anniversary, Gertrude Contemporary is innovating the format of the annual Studio Artists exhibition. Curated by former Studio Artist Christian Thompson, this year’s iteration draws on the history of Gertrude’s studio complex, and features work by past and present Studio Artists, including new work by Thompson himself.

Gertrude Contemporary and ACMI co-present Ryan Trecartin for White Night 2015

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image in partnership with Gertrude Contemporary are pleased to stage the first, major screening of preeminent contemporary artist Ryan Trecartin in Australia as part of White Night 2015. Gertrude and ACMI will present works from Trecartin’s 2013 Venice Biennale quartet, including Comma Boat, CENTER JENNY, and Item Falls (all 2013). These will screen in a loop on a single channel in ACMI's Gallery 2 on the night of 21 February 2015, between 7pm and 7am.

Trecartin was born in 1981 in Texas, and lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Recent solo exhibitions include: Ryan Trecartin/Lizzie Fitch, Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2014; Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, with Rhett Larue, Showroom MAMA, Rotterdam, Netherlands, curated by Gerben Willers, 2012; Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL, curated by Ruba Katrib, at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY, curated by Klaus Biesenbach, and at Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey, curated by Paolo Colombo and Lora Sariaslan, all 2011. Recent group exhibitions include: Pop Departures, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA, 2014–15; Para-Normal: Science Fiction and the New Normal, FACT, Liverpool, 2014; Meanwhile… Suddenly and then, 12th Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, France, 2013; Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace), Biennale di Venezia 55th International Art Exhibition, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, 2013; and Collect the WWWorld: The Artist as Archivist in the Internet Age, 319 Scholes, Brooklyn, NY, curated by Domenico Quaranta, 2012.

Ryan Trecartin is represented by Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Regen Projects, Los Angeles; and Sprueth Magers, London and Berlin.

Image: Ryan Trecartin, still from Item Falls, 2013, HD Video, duration 25:44

Congratulations to Studio Artist Scott Miles who won the third annual Besen Award on Friday night. Pictured above is an installation view of Scott's work in the Gertrude Studios Part One exhibition from October–November this year.

Photo credit: Christo Crocker.

Octopus 14, Nothing Beside Remains, curated by Tara McDowell at Gertrude Contemporary, was recently reviewed by Melbourne University's Dr Rebecca Coates for the November–December 2014 issue of frieze. Read the review here.

Image: Allan Sekula, Untitled Slide Sequence, 1972/2011, 25 black and white slides, dimensions variable, courtesy of the Estate of Allan Sekula and Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica.

Incoming Studio Artist Fayen d’Evie is part of an exhibition at Osage Art Foundation in Shanghai titled Just as money is the paper, the gallery is the room, curated by Biljana Ciric. The exhibition reflects on the history of artist-organised exhibitions between 1979 and 2006 in Shanghai. Local and international artists have been invited to re-examine and respond to an archive of materials relating to such exhibitions. Fayen’s contribution to the exhibition takes the form of a publication by 3-ply, titled Re-print #2: Shanghai Fax (Let’s Talk About Money), made with Nicholas Tammens and Matt Hinkley. The exhibition runs until 28 February 2015.

Studio Artist Sarah crowEST has a new exhibition called ‘The Gertrude Sequence’ opening at Gallery 9 in Sydney. For the show, crowEST will exhibit a series of canvases loosely based on a less well-known body of work by Swiss modernist Sophie Taeuber-Arp, modified to incorporate spectres of conversation and encounter — with studio visitors, Belgian linen, shiny pleather and a tumbleweed methodology. The exhibition runs 3 – 20 December 2014.

The Telepathy Project (Sean Peoples and Veronica Kent) stages an over-night event, ‘Star Pavilion’, at M Pavilion on Monday 17 November 2014. Continuing their explorations into dreaming, for ‘Star Pavilion’ the Telepathy Project presents a series of lectures on topics ranging from Greek cosmology and Raelianism to astrophysics and UFOlogy. The night also includes musical performances by Sophia Brous, screenings of Star Wars, horoscope readings, and a group performance of The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ at sunrise on Tuesday 18 November. A detailed overview of events is available here.

Image courtesy the Telepathy Project, 2014.

Gertrude Studio Artist Hamishi Farah is included in the exhibition ‘Notes to GB’ at Sutton Gallery. ‘Notes to GB’ is a curated exhibition in memory of the late artist Gordon Bennett, who passed away on 3 June 2014. It is ‘intended to be an open conversation between a small group of Melbourne-based contemporary practitioners and Gordon’, featuring work by Hamishi Farah, Ben McKeown, Tom Nicholson, Lisa Radford and Hugh Egan Westland, Peter Waples-Crowe, and Gordon Bennett. A catalogue with essays by Irene Sutton, Anne Marsh, Gordon Bennett, Zara Stanhope, Hamishi Farah, and Tom Nicholson has also been produced for the exhibition. The exhibition runs 13 November–13 December 2014, at Sutton Gallery, Fitzroy.

Image: Hamishi Farah, still from Marginal Aesthetics, 2014.

Gertrude Contemporary Studio Artist Soren Dahlgaard is travelling to Berlin to take part in ANTHROPOCENE CURRICULUM as part of ‘The Anthropocene Project’ at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. In its second year, The Anthropocene Project’s key research question is: ‘What should a body of “earthbound knowledge” contain, what forms of transmission are appropriate?’ Since autumn 2013, an international community of scholars from the natural, environmental, and social sciences, as well as the humanities, art, and architecture have been meeting to exchange ideas around new content, access, and methods that would do justice to the challenges posed by the current geological age known as the Anthropocene — the period in which human activity has dominated the climate. Soren will present a paper and attend discussions.

ANTHROPOCENE CURRICULUM has been developed by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in collaboration with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. It adopts an experimental approach to exploring new interdisciplinary cultures of knowledge and education. It takes place between 14 November and 22 December 2014. For more information, visit The Anthropocene Project at the HKW website.

Studio Artist Claire Lambe presents a collaborative work with Phebe Schmidt and Audrey Schmidt in the exhibition In some places it’s illegal to hang your washing out to dry, curated by Rosemary Forde at Sarah Scout Presents. The exhibition also features work by Fiona Abicare, Nadine Christensen, Carolyn Eskdale and Virginia Overell. Inspired in part by the architecture of Sarah Scout Presents, with its complex series of interlocking doors, corridors and windows onto internal courtyards, the exhibition explores themes of housework and domestic labour, as well as the processes of rendering something visible (public) and invisible (private). The exhibition runs until 12 December 2014.

Image: Claire Lambe, Phebe Schmidt and Audrey Schmidt, install view of Gertrude Studios Part One, 2014, photo: Christo Crocker.

PRESENTED BY GERTRUDE CONTEMPORARY AND DISCIPLINE IN COLLABORATION WITH ARTSPACE AND PROTOCINEMA.

INSIDE, OUTSIDE AND IN PARALLEL: SPECULATIONS FROM FOUR CURATORS WORKING IN THE TURKISH CONTEXT

Mari Spirito, Övül Durmuşoğlu, Başak Şenova and November Paynter

WEDNESDAY 29 OCTOBER, 5.45 FOR 6PM

HELEN GROGAN

Gertrude Studio Artist Helen Grogan has curated a series called SPECIFIC IN-BETWEEN (The choreographic negotiated in six parts) for ACCA's current exhibition Framed Movements. The series of performative and discursive activities approaching the choreographic within current art practice will happen every Wednesday 6pm in Gallery 1, ACCA.

Participating artists include: Gwenneth Boelens, Deanne Butterworth, Justin Clemens, Emily Cormack, Matthew Day, Atlanta Eke, Brian Fuata, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Nathan Gray, Helen Grogan, Bianca Hester, Becky Hilton, Shelley Lasica, Katie Lee, Bridie Lunney, Kate MacNeill, Sandra Parker, Geoff Robinson, Philipa Rothfield, Charlie Sofo, Benjamin Woods, Wrong Solo, and other contributing artists and audiences. 

More information and performance listings here.

Helen Grogan also has two works in the exhibition. SETTING for SPECIFIC IN-BETWEEN (The choreographic negotiated in six parts), ACCA, 2014 is an iteration of SETTING that comprises of 55 white laminate flooring panels configured on the floor of Gallery 1, ACCA to create an area of activation specific to each part of the series. In Gallery 2 is a work co-authored with Ducth artist Gwenneth Boelens titled Choreography (Gallery 2, ACCA), 2014.

Framed Movements runs from 10 October - 23 November, 2014.

Image: Helen Grogan and Gwenneth Boelens, Choreography (Gallery 2, ACCA), 2014.

DANAE VALENZA

Walkin' After Midnight by Gertrude Studio Artist Danae Valenza opens Thursday 9 October, 6-8pm, at West Space. Walkin' After Midnight is a synchronised field-recording project, creating a point of interaction between discourses around psychogeography and conceptualisation of romantic traditions. The exhibition presents participants from disparate corners of the globe that walk an individual path through their city/town, travelling to the nearest body of water. All are united by the moment their excursion takes place, 12:00am Greenwhich mean time. 

Exhibition Dates: 10 October - 8 November, 2014
Artist Talk: Thursday 6 November, 5.30-6.30pm

Image: courtesy Danae Valenza

HELEN GROGAN

Gertrude Studio Artist Helen Grogan performed Concrete Room (2005-) at the Liquid Architecture: The Ear is a Brain festival opening on September 24 at the Meat Market, Melbourne. In the work a microphone traces the perimeter of the site and in this iteration the artist used one hundred metres of white microphone cable. 

Another work by the artist entitled Sounding Out Art Spaces (Clap test for 16 Melbourne art galleries, 2014) has been released as part of the Ear is a Brain LP launched by Liquid Architecture during the festival. 

Image: Helen Grogan, Concrete Room (2005-), courtesy the artist. Image credit: Laura May Grogan.

TAHI MOORE, Skype interview with Christopher LG Hill and James Deutsher

TUESDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2014 5:30PM

Tahi Moore will join us via Skype from Auckland on Tuesday to talk about his exhibition Psyche Rebuild currently on at Gertrude Contemporary.

A selection of You Tube videos chosen by Tahi will be followed by a Skype conversation with Christopher LG Hill and James Deutsher, both of whom have worked with Tahi on previous projects, and exhibition curator Pip Wallis. The interview will explore Tahi’s filmic and literary influences, his ongoing use of denim and interest in language.

Tahi Moore’s work tends toward philosophical enquiry and sets aside clarity of perception and narrative in favour of an exploratory atmosphere.

The exhibition Psyche Rebuild presents an installation and new video works. The videos pair short cuts of imagery with French and English subtitles. The relationship between image and language stretches, opening up associative possibilities. Various psychological states are evoked as the videos survey suburban and rural landscapes, sometimes empty, sometimes peopled and often at transitional times of the day. 

Psyche Rebuild weaves together references to film and music history that intersect as synchronicities. Jeans are often integrated into Moore’s work as objects of ontological interest. They appear in this exhibition through a series of plinths painted to reference denim. A pair of AMCO jeans, made in New Zealand in the 1970s, will be worn by someone at the exhibition opening.

Tahi Moore lives and works in Auckland. Recent solo exhibitions include Non, Pas La Fortresse!, La Salle de bains, Lyons France, 2014; Autonoir, Artspace Auckland, 2013; Abstract Sequels, Returns, Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland 2012; Nonsuch Park, Hopkinson Cundy, Auckland 2011; War against the self, Gambia Castle, Auckland 2010. Moore’s films and performances have been included in 5th Auckland Triennial, 2013; Mexico City Blues, Shanaynay, Paris and New York Gallery, New York, 2012; Caraway Downs, Artspace, Auckland, 2011; Moment Making, Artspace, Auckland, 2007. Moore is represented by Hopkinson Mossman, Auckland.

This exhibition has been made possible with the generous support of the Chartwell Trust.

Image: Tahi Moore, Varience time problems etc, (video still) 2014

HONG-KAI WANG, CONCEPTUAL BIOGRAPHY OF CHRIS MANN

Conceptual Biography of Chris Mann is a part of the 2014 Liquid Architecture program by artist Hong-Kai Wang. Wang works with listening as a conceptual tool to explore social relations and the (re)construction of cultural memory in marginal spaces, focused on a collaborative and process-driven approach to production. Her work spans performance, workshop, text, video and installation. 

Conceptual Biography of Chris Mann will take place on Saturday September 27, 3-6 pm, in Studio 18 at Gertrude Contemporary.

SEAN PEOPLES AND VERONIKA KENT

The Telepathy Project (Veronika Kent and Gertrude Studio Artist Sean Peoples) will be exhibitng at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, as part of Primavera 2014: Young Australian Artists.

Primavera is an annual showcase of young Australian emerging and established artists . The exhibition is curated in 2014 by guest curator Mikala Dwyer. 

Exhibition runs from 23 September until 30 November at the MCA.

Image: The Telepathy Project, 20 Days of Dream Telepathy, 2013, oil on board, chairs, fabric, paint. Image courtesy the artists and photographer Jake Walker.

HELEN HUGHES APPOINTED CURATOR AT GERTRUDE

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to welcome Helen Hughes to the position of Curator for 12 months.

Helen brings strong curatorial and project management skills to the role as well as a depth of knowledge on contemporary art and writing. In her role as co-founder and co-editor of the Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline (with Nicholas Croggon and David Homewood), Helen has collaborated with Gertrude Contemporary on the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline Contemporary Art Lecture series since 2013. The board and staff of Gertrude Contemporary are thrilled to welcome Helen to the organisation.

Helen Hughes is co-founder and co-editor of the Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline (with Nicholas Croggon and David Homewood), and was an editor of the peer-reviewed online journal emaj - Electronic Melbourne Art Journal (2012–2014). She has taught art history and theory at the University of Melbourne, and in the Critical and Theoretical Studies department at the Victorian College of the Arts. She is also a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Melbourne. Since 2009, she has been a chairperson with David Homewood and Nicholas Croggon of the postgraduate Modern and Contemporary Art Reading Group at the University of Melbourne. Helen was the student representative on the Board of the Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne between 2012 and 2013.

In April 2013, Helen established and has since organised the Gertrude Contemporary–Discipline monthly contemporary art lecture series with Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne. Helen was the Lecture and Forum Coordinator for the 2012 Melbourne Art Fair, assistant curator at Utopian Slumps between 2009 and 2011, sub-editor of un Magazine Vol. 4 in 2010, a research assistant for the exhibition and book Cubism and Australian Art (Lesley Harding and Sue Cramer, Heide Museum of Modern Art and Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2009) between 2007 and 2009, and participated in the 2009 Gertrude Contemporary and Art & Australia Emerging Writers Program. Helen has written for publications such as frieze, Broadsheet, Art and Australia, Eyeline, un Magazine, Dissect, and Discipline. In 2013, Helen co-edited with Amelia Barikin the anthology Making Worlds: Art and Science Fiction and with Nicholas Croggon, Impresario: Paul Taylor, the Melbourne Years, 1981–1984.

Helen replaces Pip Wallis, who has been seconded for 12 months to Chisenhale Gallery in London. Helen will begin at Gertrude Contemporary in November 2014. 

Photo courtesy Helen May Grogan.

GERTRUDE STUDIO PROGRAM APPLICATIONS

DUE 12 SEPTEMBER, 2014 BY 5:30 PM

Since it's inception in 1983 Gertrude Contemporary's Studio Program has provided practical support and professional advocacy for many of Australia's leading contemporary artists.

Gertrude Contemporary has sixteen low-cost non-residential artist studios available for artists in the first fifteen years of their professional career. Applications are accepted annually for these two-year studio residencies. For those studios becoming available in 2015, applications are due by Friday 12 September by 5:30 pm. 

Succesful applicants are chosen on the basis of quality of work, perceived potential, space requirements and financial need. The organisation also attempts to create a balance of media, gender and age in the studio artist body. 

Applicants will be notified of outcomes by the end of November 2014.

Find more information and application forms here.

SØREN DAHLGAARD

The Maldives Exodus Caravan Show is a mobile exhibition that acts to promote environmental and political awareness. Featuring a selection of international artists, the show consists of non-physical artworks and includes performance, video and an educational program.

The Maldives Exodus Caravan Show curated by Gertrude Studio Artist Søren Dahlgaard as an Official Collateral Event of the 55th Venice Biennale with Museum of Everything, will tour to two venues this month.

On the 21 September the exhibition opens at Silent Barn Art Center, New York until 5th October and will also be part of Peoples Climate March, Manhattan, NYC. On the 27 September it opens at CCA Andratx in Mallorca, Spain until 15th March 2015. 

Image: Søren Dahlgaard, The Maldives Exodus Caravan Show, image courtesy the artist

TERRY SMITH 

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to be partnering with Discipline and the National Gallery of Victoria to present World Art Now, The Provincialism Problem Then: 40 years of contemporary art, a lecture by Terry Smith.

Smith will describe the circumstances of the writing of the seminal article The Provincialism Problem, first published in New York magazine Artforum in September 1974. This article was among one of the first to question the concentration of modernist values in the artworld in cities such as New York, Paris, and London. In this lecture Smith will trace the responses to the article up to the present day, including his own changes of mind. He will consider how the problems and possibilities identified in the 1970's  have fared since then, and how world pictures changed during the shift from late modern to contemporary art.

World Art Now, The Provincialism Problem Then: 40 years of contemporary art takes place on Wednesday 3 September, 6 pm, at The National Gallery of Victoria Clemenger BBDO Auditorium, Ground Level, 180 St Kilda Road (enter via North entrance.)

Book online here.

SEAN PEOPLES AND VERONIKA KENT

The Telepathy Project will host a "town meeting" as part of their work 'Reading Solaris to the Great Moorool' for the Tarrawarra Biennial 2014: Whisper in My Mask. The free event at the Healesville Hotel will play host to a diverse panel that will explore and celebrate histories, knowledge and stories of water in the Yarra Valley and beyond.  

Guest Speakers include: Aunty Joy Wandin Murphy AO, Senior Wurundjeri Elder; Dr Leon Marvell, Associate Professor in Film and Video, Deakin University; Mick Woiwood, Author and local historian; The Healesville and District Historical Society and Artists Sean Peoples and Veronika Kent.

The "town meeting" will take place at the Healesville Hotel Tuesday 2 September, 2014. No bookings are required.

Arrive at 5 pm, for 5.30 - 7 pm.

More information here.

HELEN GROGAN, STUDIO 3

These pictures are from Gertrude Studio Artist Helen Grogan's studio space. The artist has multiple projects in stages of development up in Studio 3 at 200 Gertrude Street. Helen applies choreographic thought and processes as strategies to activate spaces and situations, and seeks an embodied attention to the present and concrete.

Helen Grogan is currently in the process of making the work 'Choreography (For Gallery 2, ACCA), 2006 - 2014', for forthcoming exhibition Framed Movements at ACCA. The print outs depicting a marquette show the collaborative working process of Helen with dutch artist Gwenneth Boelens.

Helen is also curating a six-part series on choreography as an expanded field entitled SPECIFIC IN-BETWEEN (The choreographic negotiated in six parts). The series is also a part of Framed Movements and will occur over six Wednesdays in ACCA's gallery one, and through accompanying online materials. The white laminate flooring currently in her studio will act as a movable setting to generate alernative relationships between the viewer and performance. Artists involved include; Gwenneth Boelens, Matthew Day, Agatha Gothe-Snape, Nathan Gray, Helen Grogan, Brian Fuata, Geoff Robinson, Claire Lamb, Shelley Lasica, Benjamin Woods amongst others.

Framed Movements will run from 10 October until 23 November at ACCA, and is also a part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. 

Helen presented a performance and installation work at Slopes in April this year, which she is currently developing for a 4-week long solo exhibition at West Space early next year, concurrently presented with a solo project by Gertrude alumni Geoff Robinson.

SASKIA SCHUT AND SCOTT MITCHELL

The Reading Room is part of current Gertrude exhibition Nothing Beside Remains curated by Tara McDowell. The exhibition activates the entire building at 200 Gertrude with works by thirteen prominent Australian and international artists.

Situated in the front gallery the Reading Room has promoted and played host to a series of events by various collaboraters. Saskia Schut and Scott Mitchell have organised readings by artists, writers, designers, and publishers. The space has continued to subtly respond to the tenor of the texts through alterations to the atmosphere, lighting, time of day, and refreshments. 

All of the readings have been recorded and can be accessed here.

Nothing Beside Remains, and Reading Room events, will continue until the 23 August.

SARAH CROWEST AND BENJAMIN WOODS

Gertrude Studio Artist Sarah CrowEst and Benjamin Woods will present a new collaborative project with c3 Contemporary Art Space at the Melbourne Art Fair.

In the project room, a sloping platform will display an array of sculptures, vessels and action instruments in various stages of making and unmaking. The walls will be subtly marked with ghostly traces of the process of installing the work and various slight, almost imperceptible spatial interventions. 

The MAF Project Rooms showcases the work of a new generation of unrepresented artists in association with public and independant contempoarary art spaces from around Australia creating an opportunity for innovative and experimental work to be shown within the context of a major international art event.

Melbourne Art Fair runs from the 13 - 17 August. 

Image: Sarah CrowEst, courtesy the artist and c3 Contemporary Art Space.

SEAN BAILEY

Gertrude Studio Artist Sean Bailey will exhibit work at the forthcoming exhibition The Dreamer is Still Asleep curated by Linsey Gosper. The exhibition takes as its reference point the quest for knowledge of the unknown that extends beyond pure reason and the physical sciences. Exhibiting artists also include; Benjamin Armstrong, Naomi Bishop, Ben Cauchi (NZ) and Patrick Doherty. 

Exhibition runs 8 August - 6 September at Strange Neighbour

Image: Sean Bailey, 'Green Window' 2013, synthetic polymer paint, collage, glass, linen Board, artist frame, 53.5 x 43.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Daine Singer, Melbourne.

JESS JOHNSON AND SEAN BAILEY

Spring 1883 is a new art fair that sees twenty galleries exhibiting in a suite at The Windsor, Melbourne's oldest grand hotel. The fair draws on the traditions of the Gramercy Park Fair, New York and provides a site for dialogue between galleries, artists and collectors. Participation in Spring 1883 is by personal invitation only. 

Gertrude Studio Artist's Jess Johnson and Sean Bailey will both exhibit new work with Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney and Daine Singer, Melbourne respectively.

Spring 1883 runs from August 14 - 17.

Image: Jess Johnson, Culture Pact Triptych, 2014, 3 step frame, pen, fibre tipped markers, metallic paint and gouache on paper, 185 x 93 cm framed. Courtesy the artist.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Asialiank Art Residency Program is designed to create meaningful and enduring relationships between individuals and organisations in Australia and Asia. Asialink works in partnership with arts residency centres in the region to realise this goal. Asialink Arts Residencies are professional development opportunities, aimed at being mutually beneficial to both host and resident through two-way knowledge and skills transfer, which is emphasized by way of their Reciprocal Residency and Residency Laboratory programs.

Applications close 30 September, 5 pm EST.

More info here.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

The Australia Council ArtStart program is designed to give financial assistance to recent arts graduates, to ease the trasnsition from studying to a professional career in the arts. An ArtStart grant could provide you with up to $10,000 to fund services, resources, skills development and/or equiptment to assist your professional practise.

Next round of applications close 22 September.

More info here.

Sarah CrowEst

Deep Time opens 30 July, 6 pm at TCB art Inc. Deep Time is a term employed to describe the unfathomable depths of the earth's geological history. It presumes the mind's incapacity to grasp the concept of geological eras and so substitutes a measurement with a metaphor. The exhibition will explore the significance of geology in our present time.

Artists' include; David Mutch, Susan Jacobs, Ross Taylor, Andy Hutson and Gertrude Studio Artist Sarah CrowEst. 

Exhibition continues until 16 August, 2014.

Image: Sarah CrowEst, courtesy the artist.

CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS

Gertrude Studio Artist Agatha Gothe-Snape is creating a work entitled 'An Uncertain Reader' for the forthcoming exhibition 'Nothing Beside Remains' curated by Tara McDowell.

Gothe-Snape asked former Gertrude Studio Artists, from throughout the 30 years of the organisation’s history, to nominate a text that was influential during their time in residence. The submitted texts have been compiled into a reader that charts the social and intellectual history of Gertrude and the reoccurring trends and ideological deposits in cultural production that occurred there. 

The reader will be read only by the gallery invigilators who sit in the building throughout the month long exhibition. They are invited to annotate and highlight the reader if they choose to, and read the tome either as individuals or collectively – whatever they see fit. This access to the knowledge contained in the reader is an exchange made with the people who contribute their time and energy through the act of invigilating. It is up to the invigilator to share, if they have the desire to do so, the knowledge in the reader to gallery visitors, colleagues or friends.

Gothe-Snape will hold a workshop for the invigilators prior to the exhibition opening at a time to be confirmed. 

We are seeking invigilators to sit in the upstairs hallway of Gertrude Contemporary and read 'An Uncertain Reader' between Saturday 26 July and Saturday 23 August. 

The work periods will be:
11am – 2pm and 2pm – 5:30pm, Tuesday – Friday 
11am – 4:30pm Saturday 

Each invigilator is payed a lunch and travel payment. 

If you're interested in being involved please contact Shae Nagorcka, Gallery Manager at [email protected]

Image: Agatha Gothe-Snape, courtesy the artist

SEAN BAILEY

Gertrude Studio Artist Sean Bailey's exhibition Marked and Uttering opens at West Space on Thursday the 31 July, 6 - 8 pm. The exhibition is the outcome of the artists belief that the process of painting is an improvised, meditative and intuitive practise, that also relies upon self-created systems and rituals with which to work. Marked and Uttering is the outcome of working within these systems and parameters that allow for chance, undesired/desired things to occur and subconscious direction.

Artist Talk: Thursday 28 August 2014, 5:30-6:30pm

Exhibition runs from 1 - 30 August

Image: Sean Bailey, courtesy the artist

SCOTT MILES

Exhibition runs from 1-30 August.

Image: Scott Miles, courtesy the artist.

EMERGING WRITERS PROGRAM MENTEES

We are delighted to announce the mentees for the 2014 Gertrude Contemporary and Art and Australia Emerging Writers Program.

Run in partnership with Australia’s leading art magazine Art and Australia, this program offers four emerging writers the opportunity to develop their writing practice and gain further insight into the field of contemporary art writing through a mentorship with a leader in the field and to create two pieces of professional writing for publication.

The 2014 participants are:

Aodhan Madden (Melbourne) who will be mentored by Kyla McFarlane, freelance writer and curator, and Associate Curator at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne.

Eleanor Zeichner (Sydney) who will be mentored by Anne Loxley, writer, curator and the C3West Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Julian Murphy (Melbourne) who will be mentored by Gabriella Coslovich, freelance writer and editor of Gallery magazine at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Chloe Mandryke (Sydney) who will be mentored by Jeff Khan, curator, writer and Artistic Director, Performance Space, Sydney.

Established in 2005, the Gertrude Contemporary and Art and Australia Emerging Writers Program provides a unique opportunity for emerging visual arts writers to contribute to critical discussions of Australian contemporary art.

The Emerging Writers program is designed to professionally support emerging arts writers who are committed to a career in contemporary art and criticism. The program provides participants with professional development and mentorship and is the longest-running program of it’s kind in Australia. Participants will contribute to the growth of a rich and insightful critical culture around contemporary art in Australia and gain unparalleled access to professional networks and the opportunity to publish in Australia’s preeminent art magazine.

Each writer will create a catalogue essay for a Gertrude Contemporary Studio 12 exhibition and an artist profile for the Art and Australia / Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award for publication in Art and Australia magazine.

To view previously published outcomes of this program please see the Emerging Writers section on our website: http://www.gertrude.org.au/programs/emerging-writers/ emerging-writers-32/

This program is made possible with the support of Copyright Agency Cultural Funding.

For further information please contact

Pip Wallis, Assistant Curator - Communications Gertrude Contemporary
200 Gertrude St
Fitzroy,VIC, 3065
[email protected]

Image: Alex Martinis Roe, Free Associations, 2010, altered installation view, 20 minute durations, masonite, hardwood, tile grouting, acrylic paint, chalk.

SEAN PEOPLES AND VERONICA KENT

The Telepathy Project (Veronica Kent and Gertrude Studio Artist Sean Peoples) will be exhibiting at the Tarrawarra Biennial 2014: Whisper In My Mask. Their work 'Reading Solaris to the Great Moorool' will explore and celebrate histories, knowledge and stories of water in the Yarra Valley.

The Tarrawarra Biennial celebrates new currents in contemporary Australian art and is curated this year by Natalie King and Djon Mundine.

Exhibition runs from 16 August - 16 November 2014 at the Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Healesville.

Image: The Telepathy Project 'Reading Solaris to the Great Moorool', courtesy the artists' and the Tarrawarra Museum of Art.

DANAE VALENZA

Watch Gertude Studio Artist Danae Valenza's artist interview produced by ACCA for NEW14. 'Colour Piano for Chromatic Portraits' was exhibited at the gallery from 15th March - 18th May 2014 with performances happening daily.

Video courtesy ACCA. 

SARAH CROWEST

Heaven-sent crumbs opens Saturday the 5^th July from 4 – 6pm in the Project Room at Utopian Slumps. The joint exhibition by Justin Hinder and Gertrude Studio Artist Sarah CrowEST responds to the narrative of Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’. The exhibition will run from 5 – 26^th July.

Image: Sarah CrowEST, courtesy the artist.

ALASDAIR MCLUCKIE

Alasdair McLuckie’s new exhibition Two lovers sit on a beach dreaming at the night sky as the waves wave hello to their eternal moon friend, who smiles and waves right back opens July 4^th at Murray White Room. The exhibition continues until August 16.

Image: Alasdair McLuckie, Untitled 2014,Woven and embroidered glass seed beads on wool, mounted on birch wood panel, courtesy of the artist and Murray White Room.

SØREN DAHLGAARD 

Søren Dahlgaard will be exhibiting at the upcoming TarraWarra Biennial 2014: Whisper In My Mask opening on August 16^th. Curators Natalie King and Djon Mundine will explore the theme of masking, secrets and hidden narratives as psychological states. The biennial celebrates new currents in contemporary Australian art practise.

Image: Søren Dahlgaard, 'Bobby Bunnungurr, Dough Portrait 2014'. Image courtesy Søren Dahlgaard and BiennaleFoundation.org

AGATHA GOTHE-SNAPE

Agatha Gothe-Snape is exhibiting in the 8^th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art that opened on the 29^th of May. Agatha’s work, Untitled (2014), is a text-based procedural work for the splash page of the Biennale’s website made up of eighty word combinations appearing randomly.

To see Agatha's work click here and refresh your screen.

Image: Agatha Gothe-Snape, 'Untitled (2014), screenshot http://www.berlinbiennale.de. Image courtesy Agatha Gothe-Snape and the 8th Berlin Biennale.

TULLY MOORE

Tully Moore’s World Cup Breakfast Bar (TMWCBB) continues until the 13^th of July as a part of this years programming in the West Space Reading Room. All of the finals for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil will be shown live with breakfast dishes served to complement the nations playing to win the cup. Stay-up-to date with match times and results via twitter @tmwcbb and head over to the TMWCBB to watch the ‘World Game’.

More information here

Image courtesy Tully Moore and West Space.

BRIDIE LUNNEY

Gertrude Studio Artist Bridie Lunney presents The place where the fire is kept for the Phoenix Foyer Commission at 82 Flinders Street, Melbourne. Curated by Martina Copley the site-specific work responds to the architectural place of many movements, the foyer.

See more info

Image: Bridie Lunney, 'The place where the fire is kept', installation view, 82 Flinders Street, Melbourne. Image courtesy Bridie Lunney.

TiNNN Reader Launch

SATURDAY 12 APRIL, 5PM – 7PM 

Following her residency at Gertrude Contemporary's Visiting Curators Program in March 2014, Berlin curator Fiona Geuss led a workshop, together with artists and Public School founders Caleb Waldorf and Sean Dockray, that resulted in creation of the TiNNN reader. The publication comprises readings proposed by participants following the workshop.

This reader states that there is no now now, or that - as Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin put it - everyday anew we have to answer the questions addressed by art with our own lives.

Fiona states; we met on Saturday, March 15 for a spontaneous workshop at Gertrude Contemporary, which assessed our (artists, writers, curators, academics, etc.) ongoing relationships with cultural institutions of varying scales.

The focus was oriented towards how institutional frameworks impact and inform our practices in an ongoing manner, from the perspective of the day to day activities that comprise our work. The conversation departed from the opposition and the resistance mobilised against the Biennale of Sydney's funding by Transfield and the subsequent repercussions, both known and speculative. The desire was to connect the situation taking place in this context to a broader set of concerns facing many who work within, and rely on, contemporary cultural infrastructures.

As output of the workshop participants decided to create a reader related to topics around corporate funding, alternative institutions, and the social impact of art. Over the course of one week, we collected the group’s contributions for seven chapters that emerged during our discussion. Without having a precise goal this collection called TiNNN could be followed by an annotated publication, be a starting point of a series of public events in different places, or serve as compilation for further discussions - in Melbourne and elsewhere.

A pdf of the reader can be accessed on the aaaaarg website here.

Image: Published in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 3rd, 1987, subtitled 'Die Kunst des Zuschauens' (the art of spectating).

SOUTH WAYS MELBOURNE ROUND TABLE AND READINGS 

South Ways is an open program of reading and discussion that seeks to define creative practices that are particular to the South. It follows from the earlier South Project in seeking to position Australia within emerging south-south exchanges involving artists and writers in Africa, South Asia, Pacific and Latin America. Beyond reference to common themes, South Ways is a space to consider the platforms on which art exists.

The roundtables held during 2014 will each take an action as their origin, with 'open' underpinning the Melbourne event. This roundtable will address art that reveals its conditions.

More information can be found here. For inquiries and to join the email discussion with access to reading and discussion, please email [email protected] 

The Victor Pinchuk Foundation and the PinchukArtCentre open the Application Procedure for the third edition of the Future Generation Art Prize 2014. Young artists up to 35 wherever they live and work can apply starting from January 13 till April 12, 2014 at the competition’s website

The Future Generation Art Prize established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in 2009 is a worldwide contemporary art prize to discover, recognize and give long-term support to a future generation of artists. The Prize is a major contribution to the open participation of younger artists in the dynamic cultural development of societies in global transition.

The Main Prize will be awarded to one artist who will receive the amount of US$ 100,000 from the international jury in the context of an exhibition. The Prize will be split in US$ 60,000 in cash and US$ 40,000 for the investment of new work production.

All artists up to 35 may apply with their work without any restrictions concerning gender, nationality, race or artistic medium.

More information here.

Seoul Art Space Geumcheon's annual residency program is now open for applications. 

This international artist residency program provides travel, accomodation and partial project costs for a three month residency period. 

Applications are due 28 March 2015 and more information can be found here.

The Gertrude Contemporary and ARTAND Australia Emerging Writers Program provides a unique opportunity for emerging visual arts writers to contribute to the critical discussion of Australian contemporary art.

Run in partnership with Australia’s leading art magazine ARTAND Australia, this program is based in Melbourne and Sydney. It offers four emerging writers the opportunity to develop their writing practice, publish their work and gain further insight into the field of contemporary art writing. 

The program contributes to the growth of a rich and insightful critical culture around contemporary art, providing participants with professional development and mentorship. Established in 2005, it is the longest-running program of its kind in Australia and offers unparalleled access to professional networks and the opportunity to publish in Australia’s most important art magazine.

Four applicants selected to participate in the program are teamed with a mentor who is a leader in the field and with whom they work to create two pieces of professional writing for publication. Each writer produces a catalogue essay for a Gertrude Contemporary Studio 12 exhibition and an artist profile for publication in ARTAND Australia magazine. The Emerging Writers from New South Wales will be required to travel to Melbourne to meet with the Gertrude Contemporary Studio Artist on whose work they will be writing for the Studio 12 exhibition catalogue.

The 2014 Mentors:

Gabriella Coslovich, freelance writer and editor of Gallery magazine at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Jeff Khan, curator, writer and Artistic Director, Performance Space, Sydney.

Anne Loxley, former Sydney Morning Herald art critic, has published numerous essays and articles. She is currently C3West Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.  

Kyla McFarlane, freelance writer and curator, and Associate Curator at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne.

Applications should include:                                                                

• A cover letter expressing why you would like to take part     

 • Curriculum Vitae                                                                    

• A writing sample of up to 700 words (Preferably a catalogue essay or review of an art work, exhibition or event rather than a university essay or thesis extract. This does not need to have been previously published.)

DEADLINE: Friday 21st March 5pm (late applications will not be accepted. Email applications are preferred.  Applications sent via post must be postmarked Friday 21st March)

Email your application to:                                                                                      

Shae Nagorcka, Gallery Manager   

[email protected]

Or post to: 

Gertrude Contemporary                                                          

200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC 3065    

Image: Alex Martinis Roe, Free Associations, 2010, altered installation view, 20 minute durations, masonite, hardwood, tile grouting, acrylic paint, chalk. 

TUESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2014, 6PM – 8PM. FREE EVENT, BOOKINGS NOT NECESSARY.

AN OPEN DISCUSSION ON CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

ASSEMBLY IS A PLATFORM FOR DISCUSSION IN RESPONSE TO CURRENT EVENTS AND IDEAS

Recent debates have raised a number of questions about the nature and ethics of western artistic practices that appropriate from nonwestern cultures. This forum intends to explore the colonial history of cultural appropriation in Australia, and to reflect on what continuities exist between contemporary and historical forms and strategies of appropriation.  

Gertrude Assembly is hosting this forum following discussion generated by the recent exhibition of work by Melbourne fashion label P.A.M. with the intention of expanding and extending the dialogue.

Moderator: 

Eugenia Flynn is the co-ordinator of the Willin Centre at the VCA.

Speakers:

Paola Balla was a curator in the Melbourne Indigenous Arts Festival in 2012. She is an artist, community arts practitioner, Indigenous studies lecturer and, most recently, a Victorian Indigenous Art Award (VIAA) winner.

Texta Queen uses the humble felt-tip pen to explore politics of sexuality, gender, race and identity in tangent with ideas of self-image and inter-personal relationships. Texta also publishes widely on race and racism.

Dr. Odette Kelada is a lecturer in Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne. Odette Kelada researches and publishes on whiteness, race and gender in Australian writing and the arts. Key interests include the constructions of nation, body and identity in creative representations and the pedagogy of racial literacy.

Dianne Jones is an artist whose work deals with indigenous identity and cultural history. She is represented by Niagara Galleries. She also teaches a racial literacy course with Odette Kelada.

Gertrude Contemporary is delighted to announce the 2014 studio artists Ross Coulter, Sarah CrowEST, Søren Dahlgaard, Minna Gilligan, Helen Grogan,  Claire Lambe, Tully Moore, Sean Peoples and Danae Valenza. 

These artists will enter the Gertrude Contemporary Studio Program in 2014 to join the ongoing group of eight artists in residence.

Since its inception in 1983, Gertrude Contemporary’s Studio Program has provided practical support and professional advocacy for many of Australia’s leading contemporary artists. The program, which consists of sixteen non-residential studios, is available to artists in the first fifteen years of their professional practice and provided for two-year tenures. 

Through the ongoing importance of this on-site studio program the artist is placed firmly at the centre of the Gertrude Contemporary community.

Work by the current Gertrude Contemporary studio artists will be exhibited in the annual Gertrude Studios exhibition. Gertrude Studios 2013 opens on Friday 15 November, 6 - 8pm and the exhibition runs until 11 December.

As part of the annual exhibition Gertrude Contemporary Studio Artists will be opening their studios to the public for one afternoon only on Saturday 23 November 1 - 4pm. This is an exclusive opportunity to meet the artists and gain an invaluable insight into their practices.

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to announce the appointment of Emma Crimmings to the role of Director.

Emma brings to the role strong creative, business and leadership skills, having worked as a filmmaker, a Producer for ABC TV Arts, a curator at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image and the Australian Centre for Photography, and most recently as Acting Director and Program Manager of Cultural Affairs at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC.

Gertrude Contemporary Chair of the Board, Mandy Fox, says “We are delighted to welcome Emma Crimmings to the role of Director. From her formative academic speciality in art history and criticism, to acclaimed work as an independent filmmaker, Emma also brings to Gertrude Contemporary tremendous skills in curatorship and project management. We are very pleased to appoint a Director who combines creative vision with such strong management and fundraising experience.”

Over three decades, Gertrude Contemporary has supported experimentation in the production and presentation of contemporary art through a unique combination of exhibition and studio programs, alongside innovative cultural exchange, professional development and public programs that acknowledge the increasingly multi-disciplinary nature of art practice.

With her breadth of experience across artistic disciplines, Emma is well placed to maintain the diversity and ambition of Gertrude Contemporary’s programs, and to lead the organization through an exciting phase in its history.  

Emma’s dynamism and extensive national and international networks throughout the cultural sector will be an asset in working with the Board to galvanize the support of our current community and shore up the organization for a long and sustainable future.

“With a unique and rich history, Gertrude Contemporary plays a vital role within the Australian arts community. I am looking forward to building upon the organization’s strengths, identifying new audiences and spearheading an exciting relocation plan” says Crimmings. 

Emma will begin her role as Director at Gertrude Contemporary in mid-January 2014.

A RARE AND EXCITING OPPORTUNITY TO LEAD THIS NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART ORGANISATION

Gertrude Contemporary is seeking a charismatic and communicative director who has successfully led an art institution in the past, or who has otherwise shown distinctive leadership in the field of cultural programming and/or contemporary art. The ideal candidate has an in-depth knowledge of cultural initiatives and contemporary art, and an established position within local, national and international cultural networks. 

The ideal candidate is a confident, open art-world professional who has a long-term vision for Gertrude Contemporary, and the necessary social and managerial skills to lead the organisation in the areas of artistic programming and organisational sustainability. 

Reporting to the Chairperson and Board, the Director will provide organisational leadership in the pursuit of significant targets relating to artistic programming, audience development, fundraising, stakeholder liaison, infrastructure and securing a long-term housing solution.  

The role will be integral to creating a sustainable platform for activities in the coming years, nurturing a vision that is both ambitious and feasible in a national and international context. The Board of Directors regards this appointment as an exciting moment for Gertrude Contemporary to build on its existing strengths and explore new opportunities. The Director will be required to ensure the continuation of Gertrude Contemporary’s vital role in supporting the production and presentation of contemporary art, working collaboratively across a complex organisation to deliver exceptional results. 

Gertrude Contemporary Profile: With risk, experimentation and critical ideas at the heart of everything we do, Gertrude Contemporary leads the way as Australia’s first and most influential combined gallery and studio complex.                       

 Established in 1983 in a large converted warehouse in Fitzroy, Melbourne, and named initially after its address – 200 Gertrude Street - the organisation has since expanded, transforming from an address to an entity, and changing its name to Gertrude Contemporary in 2010.

Over three decades Gertrude Contemporary has built on its origins to accommodate the diversification of contemporary art practices. With the artist firmly placed at the centre of all our activities, we continue to position ourselves at the nexus between the production of contemporary art through our studio programs, and its presentation through our exhibitions, publications and public programs. 

Application Deadline 5pm Wednesday 9 October 2013  

For more information or to request a copy of the Position Description please direct your enquiries to: Mandy Fox, Chairperson, Board, Gertrude Contemporary, [email protected]

'

LECTURE #6: NIKOS PAPASTERGIADIS, ON FRIENDSHIP 

Thursday 26 September, 2013, 6pm for 6:30pm, free event, bookings not necessary.

We are pleased to announce that the sixth lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary – Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series will be given by Melbourne academic and writer Professor Nikos Papastergiadis.

In this lecture, On Friendship, Papastergiadis will consider what role sensory awareness plays in our knowledge of contemporary art. He will argue that the answer to these questions requires more than just looking at art.

The Gertrude Contemporary – Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art.  Throughout 2013 lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Nikos Papastergiadis is Professor at the School of Culture and Communication and Director of the Research Unit in Public Cultures at the University of Melbourne. His current research focuses on the investigation of the historical transformation of contemporary art and cultural institutions by digital technology. His publications include Modernity as Exile (1993), Dialogues in the Diaspora (1998), The Turbulence of Migration (2000), Metaphor and Tension (2004) Spatial Aesthetics: Art Place and the Everyday (2006), Cosmopolitanism and Culture (2012) as well as being the author of numerous essays which have been translated into over a dozen languages and appeared in major catalogues such as the Biennales of Sydney, Liverpool, Istanbul, Gwanju, Taipei, Lyon, Thessaloniki and Documenta 13.

Listen to Nikos Papastergiadis' lecture here.

LECTURE #7: INTERFACE, ACCESS, LOSS

Wednesday October 30, 2013, 6pm for 6:30pm, free event, bookings not necessary.

From peer-to-peer utopianism of a decade ago to the power and data centralising within today’s Internet platforms, Sean Dockray will survey how the structure of digital property has changed over recent years with the growth of “the cloud” in the seventh lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary – Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series.

Dockray, initiator of knowledge-sharing platforms The Public School and aaaarg.org, will draw on computer science to trace the shifts in online knowledge sharing in what he calls “a dark lecture, written under the cloud’s shadow”, but one that will attempt to gesture toward “cracks in those interfaces that define the seemingly impermeable contours of this new reality.”

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbournebased contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers have spoken from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Sean Dockray is an artist, a founding director of the Los Angeles non-profit Telic Arts Exchange, and initiator of knowledge-sharing platforms The Public School and aaaarg. org. As a research fellow the Post-Media Lab at Leuphana University last year, he explored the physical infrastructure of the sharing economy, focusing on Facebook’s new northern European datacenter. His written essays address topics such as online education (Frieze), the militarization of universities (in Contestations: Learning from Critical Experiments in Education), book scanning (Fillip), traffic control (Cabinet), and radio (Volume).

Jake Goldenfein is a Fellow and PhD candidate at the Centre for Media and Communications Law at Melbourne Law School doing socio-legal research on histories of communication technologies and the legal regimes governing them with a focus on state archives (criminal records, photos and dossiers). He has been a researcher at Melbourne Law School, New York Law School, and The Swinburne Institute for Social Research in the fields of intellectual property, media and communications history and theory, communications policy, privacy and media law. His recent publications cover topics such as police photography, informal media economies, legal accidents, and the history of the archive.

Gertrude Contemporary congratulates Alexie Glass-Kantor on her recent appointment to the position of Executive Director at Artspace, Sydney. 

After 7 years at the helm, Gertrude Contemporary Director - Senior Curator Alexie Glass-Kantor has announced she will leave her current role to take up the position of Executive Director at Artspace, Sydney. 

Glass-Kantor has lead Gertrude Contemporary through a period of dynamic development, spearheading the expansion of the organisation’s programs and its international standing. 

During her time as Director, Glass-Kantor oversaw the growth of the International Residency and Visiting Curators Programs and the establishment of the Gertrude’s Table Patron’s Program. Also during her tenure, Gertrude Contemporary underwent a major rebranding with the launch of a new identity and website by Fabio Ongarato Design. Glass-Kantor led the ongoing partnership with FOD and significant expansion in the publishing program at Gertrude Contemporary, which has generated multiple awards.  

Glass-Kantor curated exhibitions of work by Manuel Ocampo, Ulla Von Brandenburg, Harun Farocki and Young-Hae Chang: Heavy Industries and was instrumental in bringing Australian art into an global context alongside international artworks within the Gertrude Contemporary exhibition program.  She initiated the internationally acclaimed Independence Project, connecting Australian contemporary artists with peers and organisations in the region through residency and exhibition collaborations between Gertrude Contemporary and colleague organisations in Malaysia, Italy, Singapore, China and Korea. Glass-Kantor was invited to speak on this unique program at the Independent Curators International Curators Perspective series in New York in June of this year. 

Mandy Fox, Chair of the Gertrude Contemporary Board of Directors says  “Alexie has been a passionate and hardworking Director in the 7 years she has been with Gertrude. We thank her for all her tireless efforts over this time. Her talent, knowledge, enthusiasm and dedication have been outstanding. Alexie has contributed a great deal to Gertrude during her time with us, and there is no doubt she will be missed by all. We wish her well in her new position.”

Glass-Kantor states, “Over thirty years Gertrude Contemporary has accumulated an impressive alumni of artists, collaborators, supporters and peers. Building on that history it is an organisation that I was honoured to lead and it was immensely rewarding to work in tandem with the talented staff and board to establish new pathways and programming partnerships. Everyday I was reminded of the importance of community and collaboration: Gertrude Contemporary with its unique mix of studios and curatorial programs embodies the best qualities of creativity, generosity and exchange. Making the decision to leave was a difficult one, however I believe the organisation is poised to seize new opportunuties for growth and development. I look forward to a continued involvement with this gutsy and vital institution.”

Glass-Kantor continues as Director - Senior Curator at Gertrude Contemporary until mid October, departing after the launch of The Somali Peace Band, the highly anticipated project presented by Gertrude Contemporary and Melbourne Festival as part of their annual partnership. She replaces former Artspace Executive Director Blair French who is now Assistant Director, Curatorial and Digital at The Museum of Contemporary Art. 

CAOIMHÍN MAC GIOLLA LÉITH                                                                                          

IN CONVERSATION WITH REBECCA COATES

TUESDAY 27 AUGUST, 2013, 6PM FOR 6:30PM, FREE EVENT, BOOKINGS UNNECESSARY

We are pleased to announce that the fifth lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series will be given by Irish critic and curator Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, followed by a conversation with Rebecca Coates.

Mac Giolla Léith will draw on his research in the fields of Irish-language linguistics and literary criticism to address artworks including Franz Ackermann’s Mental Maps (1991-), Douglas Gordon’s Play Dead. Real Time (2003) and Ceal Floyer’sThings (2009). He will contextualise these works within wider debates surrounding the relationship between words and things and between naming and mapping. The lecture will also consider various questions raised by the resurgence in recent years of a variety of ahumanist forms of thought.

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art.  Throughout 2013 lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith is visiting Australia as part of the Gertrude Contemporary Visiting Curators Program which is funded by Arts Victoria.

Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith is a critic and occasional curator who teaches in the School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore and Linguistics at University College Dublin.  In addition to his writings on literature in the Irish language he has published widely on contemporary art. Among his most recent publications are monographic essays on the work of Douglas Gordon, Annette Kelm, Elad Lassry, Anj Smith, John Stezaker and James Welling.  He is a contributor to Afterall, Artforum, Frieze, Parkett and Tate Etc.  He has curated exhibitions in Dublin, London, Amsterdam and New York and was a juror for the 2005 Turner Prize.

Rebecca Coates is an independent curator and writer, Associate Curator, ACCA, and lecturer in Art History and Art Curatorship, School of Culture and Communications, University of Melbourne.  In 2013 she completed a PhD in the field of exhibition histories.  She has worked extensively as a curator in Australia and overseas, including ACCA, the NGV, and MOMA Oxford, where she curated and developed an extensive program of touring exhibitions and collaborative projects with art spaces and museums in the UK and Europe.  She writes regularly for Australian and international art journals and publications.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

TUESDAY 13 AUGUST, 2013, 6PM FOR 6:30PM. FREE EVENT, BOOKINGS UNNECESSARY 

The social life of the photograph – fallible, ubiquitous, promiscuous – is the subject of this program.

The undermining of photographic authority was a favoured sport of conceptual artists, who took the photograph to task for its claims to veracity, gravity and especially, the status of Art. Experimental films by artists about photography tend to exploit the tension between the photograph as documentary record and its obvious constructedness, in the process raising the question: “What is really being exposed here?”

In Richard Serra’s FRAME, the film camera documents as the artist makes a “series of measurements with a six inch ruler that demonstrate the disparity between what is seen through the lens of a camera and the direct visual perception of the same space. An unseen voice directs Serra as he stands just outside of the camera’s frame (with only his arms and hands in sight), talking through his process and reporting his measurements.”

The volatile American filmmaker, Owen Land (formerly George Landow, 1944-2011), earned a special place in the avant-garde film canon with works distinguished by their critique of romantic optics and prescient comment on simulation. The film WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? highlights Land’s concern with faulty facsimiles, bringing the viewer to a direct confrontation with the inherent instability of the image as it circulates in everyday discourse.

Morgan Fisher uses the action of photography as a reflexive gesture to pick apart the mechanics of film production, and the apparatus of the moving image. PRODUCTION STILLS highlights Fisher’s simultaneously playful and deconstructive concerns: a perfectly enclosed narrative of its own production, the image is one long take (11 minutes) of a wall on which a hand pins a number of Polaroids, one after the other. The Polaroids depict the crew making the film, while the synchronous sound allows us to hear their chatter and the hum and whirr of the still camera in ‘real time’.

Japanese artist Takashi Ito probes the seam between the moving and still image. In SPACY, a film composed of entirely of still photographs, the viewer is catapulted into the recursive world of a seemingly endless roller coaster ride through an empty gym. Underscored by a menacing soundtrack, as the late Tokyo playwright Koharu Kisaragi wrote, “the film makes you break out in sweat just by shooting a safe, peaceful gymnasium.” According to Ito, “Film is capable of presenting unrealistic world as a vivid reality and creating a strange space peculiar to the media. My major intention is to change the ordinary everyday life scenes and draw the audience (myself) into a vortex of supernatural illusion by exercising the magic of films.” (Image Forum, Oct.1984)

In BOOBS A LOT, trailblazing Australian filmmaker, provocateur and one-time hot-air balloonist Aggy Read (1941-1998) appropriates softcore girlie magazine photographs as both a provocation to Australian censors, and an assertion of film’s capacity to realise a rebellious transformation of mainstream images. Boobs A Lot is set to and in homage to the titular song by The Fugs.

With links to the tradition of the essay film (a genre noted for its reliance on still images, as in the works of Chris Marker), Melbourne collective JAH JAH SPHINX (an image-dialogue blog started circa 2006CE) describe themselves as “a form of communication between the contributors, secondly a web audience. Thirdly a dialogue between the images and posts themselves opening a myriad of relationships and readings.”

Program:

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

Owen Land, 16mm, 1972,  5 mins, USA

FRAME

Richard Serra, 16mm, 1971, 21 mins, USA

PRODUCTION STILLS

Morgan Fisher, 16mm, 1970, 11 mins, USA

SPACY

Takashi Ito, 16mm, 1981, 10 mins, Japan

BOOBS A LOT

Aggy Read, 16mm, 1966, 3 mins, Australia

Live Presentation

JAH JAH SPHINX

slide show and live sound, 15 mins, Australia

The OtherFilm - Gertrude Contemporary Screening Series presents screenings and events responding to exhibitions and stand-alone programs that survey moving image art.

OtherFilm are an artists’ collective that, since 2004, have explored the creative possibilities of experimental film, video, music and live performance by curating numerous festivals, international screening programs, and exhibitions. OtherFilm are driven by a central curiosity about the limits of the moving image, and its capacity to reorganise human perception. OtherFilm is co-directed by Joel Stern in Melbourne, Danni Zuvela in Brisbane and Sally Golding in London.              

http://otherfilm.org/

16mm prints courtesy of The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA)

Wednesday, 31 July, 6.30 - 7.30pm

Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to announce that New York based curator Lauren Cornell will give the fourth lecture in the Gertrude Contemporary – Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series. Cornell is one of the most innovative curators practising today and is undertaking a curatorial residency at the invitation of Gertrude Contemporary, which has been supported by the Australia Council for the Arts.

During her talk, Cornell will give a succinct overview of art engaged with the internet, and explore how the vastly accelerated circulation and distribution of contemporary art has facilitated the emergence of new communities, new aesthetics and formal trends and a host of discursive opportunities, and challenges. Cornell will focus on her work with Rhizome, as well as recent exhibitions she has organized, including Free (2010) at the New Museum, and Circulate (2012) at Foam, Amsterdam, and briefly discuss her work as Curator of the Museum as Hub and The 2015 New Museum Triennale.

Formerly Executive Director of Rhizome, Cornell is now Curator of 2015 Triennial (with Ryan Trecartin), Curator of Digital Projects and the Museum as Hub, which is a new model for curatorial practice and institutional collaboration at the New Museum. During her visit to Australia Cornell will be researching for these projects, meeting with artists, galleries and other curators. Her dynamic approach has been recognised internationally and she has co-curated two recent pivotal exhibitions; The Generational: Younger than Jesus, 2009 (co-curated with Massimiliano Gioni and Laura Hoptman) and Free, 2010, both at the New Museum, amongst numerous other exhibitions.

Gertrude Contemporary’s Visiting Curators Program, funded through the Australia Council for the Arts’ Visiting International Curators Program, aims to open new opportunities for Australian artists to locate their work in an international context, and for international curators to establish ongoing, in-depth relationships with Australian peers and networks. During her visit Cornell will be focusing on research and development for her current curatorial projects at the New Museum.

Cornell’s inclusion in the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is an exciting and rare opportunity for a Melbourne audience to hear one of the most critically engaged curators speak about key issues in media art today.

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Listen to Lauren Cornell's lecture here.

Saturday 27 July, 2-3pm

As part of Octopus 13: on this day alone, Cuartor Glenn Barkley along with artists Madeleine Preston, Luke Willis Thompson and Agatha-Gothe Snape will provide a guided walk through of the exhibition. 

on this day alone explores the ways that eight Australian and international artists, most of whom are not normally considered photographers, employ photography within their practice. The artists in Barkley’s selection use photography as a means to an end rather than an end in itself, highlighting how photography can be both research material as well as a final object.

You can learn more about the exhibition and view images here.

Gertrude Studio Artist Ash Kilmartin has been awarded the 2013 Maddocks Art Prize which was announced at Gertrude Contemporary on Thursday 6 June.

Since 2005 Maddocks law firm has awarded the Maddocks Art Prize in recognition of the importance of studio residency in contemporary art practice. Maddocks invites participation from five shortlisted artists currently in residence at Gertrude Contemporary (Melbourne) and five shortlisted artists from Artspace (Sydney).

The Maddocks Art Prize was judged this year by Mr Doug Hall AM, Mr Jeff Khan, Co-director of Performance Space, Ms Mira Gojak, winner of the Maddocks inaugural Art Prize in 2005 and Mr Mark Henry, Partner at Maddocks and Australian Commissioner, Venice Biennale 2013. The prize consists of a return air fare to Venice, accommodation in an apartment provided by Maddocks for a week during the Biennale and a stipend. The shortlist of Gertrude artists selected by Maddocks this year included Christopher LG Hill, Alasdair McLuckie, Eliza Dyball, Ash Kilmartin and Agatha Gothe-Snape.  Previous recipients from Gertrude Contemporary alumni include: Michelle Ussher, Richard Lewer, Benjamin Armstrong and Trevelyan Clay.

Ash Kilmartin's constructed sculptural works consider the nature of time, labour and value. Her works occur as semi-permanent alterations to space, or as temporary sculptural responses to their particular locations.

Kilmartin holds Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) and Bachelor of Arts degrees from the Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland and the University of Melbourne. Recent solo exhibitions include Kilmartin House Museum, Studio 12, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; The Perpetual Planner, RM, Auckland; STOP WORK, Y3K, Melbourne. Selected group exhibitions include Impossible Objects II, Utopian Slumps, Melbourne; HOUSE WEAR, State of Design Festival, Melbourne; Another Yummy Fantasy II, TCB, Melbourne.

LECTURE #3: JUSTIN CLEMENS, WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT CONTEMPORARY ART?

Monday 24 June, 6pm for 6:30pm. This is a free event and bookings are unnecessary.

We are pleased to announce that the third lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series will be given by Justin Clemens. His lecture What do we talk about when we talk about contemporary art? will coincide with the publication of his forthcoming book Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy. 

This lecture surveys the most important theories of contemporary art – including those by Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Boris Groys, Jacques Ranciere, various Octoberites and so-called Speculative Realists – in order to point out their strengths and weaknesses, and outline several possible new ways of talking about art. 

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds. 

Justin Clemens writes extensively on contemporary Australian art and European philosophy. His books include Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP 2013); Minimal Domination(Melbourne: Surpllus 2011), a collection of writings on art; and, with Dominic Pettman, Avoiding the Subject (Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP 2004). His creative works include the poetry chapbook Me ‘n’ me trumpet (Sydney: Vagabond 2011); the novella Black River (Melbourne: re.press 2007), with collages by Helen Johnson; and the mock-epic poem The Mundiad (Melbourne: Black Inc 2004). He is also the co-editor of collections on and by such major contemporary thinkers as Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, and Jacqueline Rose. He teaches at the University of Melbourne. 

Listen to Justin Clemens' lecture What do we talk about when we talk about contemporary art? here.

LECTURE #2: THE TRAUMA OF THE POLITICAL - OR, CATCH ME I'M FALLING (INTO THE ARMS OF THE LAW)

DR JULIET ROGERS IN CONVERSATION WITH MARIA TUMARKIN

Tuesday 28 May, 2013, 6pm for 6:30pm. Free lecture. No bookings necessary.

The second lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series The Trauma of the Political – or, catch me I’m falling (into the ambivalent arms of law) will be given by Dr Juliet Rogers followed by a conversation with writer and cultural historian Maria Tumarkin.

There is an excitement about falling that betrays itself in images and experiences of the flesh, from Richard Drew’s capture of the Falling Man during September 11, 2001, to climate change activists’ depictions of the psychosis of not believing we will hit the ground, and the suspended nature of the work of William Kentridge. Art and falling go hand in hand, and Rogers suggests, so too does politics. We can see the current politics of the liberal democratic, in which sovereign aggression is excused by sovereign care. Where law both pushes the subject into the abyss in the interests of its protection, and where flesh is cut, tortured and even killed as a mode of justice. A contemporary democratic politics that embodies such paradox offers a thin space between the air and the ground, and demands the fantasy of endless capture, for some, and the foreclosure of the possibility that flesh may fall and not be caught.

The Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series is a collaboration between Melbourne based contemporary art journal Discipline and Gertrude Contemporary. The series presents lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. Throughout 2013 lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds.

Dr Juliet Rogers is Faculty Member at the School of Political Sciences, Criminology at the University of Melbourne, and currently an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow undertaking a psychoanalytic examination of the ‘Quality of Remorse’ after periods of political and military conflict. She was formerly a community worker and then a psychotherapist. She turned from this life to work in academia and she has recently been a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, at Yale Law School, Connecticut and at the University of Cape Town Law School, South Africa. Her work is always a melding between psychoanalysis and law, that is, it is always a concern with the limit. She recently published Law’s Cut on the Body of Human Rights: Female Circumcision, Torture and Sacred Flesh which will be out in July with Routledge, and she is currently working on a monograph on Remorse.

Maria Tumarkin is a Melbourne-based writer and cultural historian. She is the author of three acclaimed books of ideas: Traumascapes, Courage and Otherland. Maria’s essays – tackling our culture’s preoccupations and blindspots – have been included in Best Australian Essays 2011 and 2012. Maria holds a PhD in cultural history from the University of Melbourne. She has taught at universities and writing centres, directed video clips, written radio documentaries, contributed catalogue essays for galleries and museums, and forged ongoing collaborations with artists and psychologists. She is a 2013-14 Sidney Myer Creative Fellow.

Listen to Juliet Rogers lecture The Trauma of the Political – or, catch me I’m falling (into the ambivalent arms of law) here.
 

OPEN STUDIO EXHIBITION: STUDIO 18, Lv 2 GERTRUDE CONTEMPORARY 

23 April – 27 April 2013, 11am - 5:30pm. (Please note this exhibition and Gertrude Contemporary will be closed on Thursday 25 April due to the Anzac Day public holiday.)

Victoria Wareham, London based artist and current Studio 18 artist in residence at Gertrude Contemporary, is holding an open studio exhibition this week. Make up for you alter ego is a selection of new site-specific works produced during her time in Australia.

Victoria is an award-winning artist based in London and has exhibited film installations across the UK and internationally. She has taught at a number of higher education institutions including the University of the Arts London.

Working with the moving image in physical space, Victoria’s practice addresses theoretical concerns relating to cultural mimicry, performance and social mutation as defined by popular culture.

Hollywood Miosis (2013) is a site-specific series of new video works that recreate iconic scenes from ‘The Shining’ and ‘Vertigo’ in the Studios of Gertrude Contemporary.

The work is presented as a multi-screen, layered projection that plays with the physical and virtual properties of the cinematic image allowing the viewer to inhabit and navigate through the work on multiple levels. The circular incisions made in the projection screen remove the work from its inherent cinematic qualities and replaces them with references to the mechanical operation of the camera and perception and interpretation of the image by the eye.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (2013) is a sculptural work that makes clear reference to the final eight minutes of the iconic film of the same title.  A sculptural representation of this iconic cinematic scene, the work transforms this fictitious two-dimensional reality into a theatrical prop which, when activated by the presence of the viewer, is a clear three-dimensional reconstruction of this scene.

See Victoria's website and blog detailing her residency at Gertrude Contemporary. 

We are delighted to announce the mentees for the 2013 Gertrude Contemporary and Art and Australia Emerging Writers Program. 

Run in partnership with Australia’s leading art magazine Art and Australia, this program offers four emerging writers the opportunity to develop their writing practice and gain further insight into the field of contemporary art writing through a mentorship with a leader in the feild and to create two pieces of professional writing for publication.

In 2013 the participants will be:

Miri Hirschfeld (Melbourne) who will be mentored by Bala Starr, Senior Curator, The Ian Potter Museum Melbourne University

Annika Kristensen (Sydney) who will be mentored by Aaron Seeto,Director, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney

Andrew Purvis (Melbourne) who will be mentored by Dr Peter Hill, artist, writer, independant curator and Associate Professor of Fine Art at RMIT University, Melbourne

Chloé Wolifson (Sydney) who will be mentored by Kathy Bail, Chief Executive, UNSW Press, Sydney.

The Gertrude Contemporary and Art and Australia Emerging Writers Program was established in 2005 to provide a unique opportunity for emerging visual arts writers to contribute to the critical discussion of Australian contemporary art. 

The aim of the Emerging Writers Program is to professionally support emerging arts writers who are committed to a career in the arena of contemporary art and criticism. This program contributes to the growth of a rich and insightful critical culture around contemporary art, providing participants with professional development and mentorship. This is the longest-running program of its kind in Australia and offers unparalleled access to professional networks and the opportunity to publish in Australia’s most important art magazine. 

Each writer will create a catalogue essay for a Gertrude Contemporary Studio 12 exhibition and an artist profile for the Art and Australia / Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award for publication in Art and Australia magazine. 

To view previously published outcomes of this program please see the Emerging Writers section on our website.

This program is made possible with the support of The Ian Potter Foundation.

Gertrude Contempoary has been listed in the online New Museum Art Spaces Directory alongside our incredible international colleague organisations the world over. The Directory is an international guide to independant art spaces "where contemporary art and artists are nurtured, interrogated and sustained". See the New Museum website for more information and to explore the directory.

Gertude Contemporary is pleased to announce the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series. 

The Melbourne-based contemporary art journal Discipline will be collaborating with Gertrude Contemporary to present a series of lectures on key concerns, artists and theories of contemporary art. The guest lecturers will speak from the perspective of a variety of different disciplines — including philosophy, cultural studies, art history and literary studies — as well as from academic and non-academic backgrounds. The lectures will be held at Gertrude Contemporary throughout 2013 and are free of charge. 

The first lecture of the Gertrude Contemporary - Discipline: Contemporary Art Lecture Series will be given by Rex Butler. ‘John Nixon: A Communist Artist’ will examine the work of Melbourne-based abstract artist John Nixon who has been the subject of much discussion over the past twenty years. He has been lauded for continuing the radical experiments of Russian constructivism, criticised for not being truly experimental, and positioned as continuing an avant-garde tradition that somehow brings together the monochrome and the readymade. In his paper, soon to be published in the journal Discipline, Rex Butler reads Nixon’s work through the writings of art critic Boris Groys to suggest that it is—of all things—communist. 

Rex Butler teaches in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland, specialising in contemporary and Australian art. He is currently working on a book on Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy? 

FIRST LECTURE: THURSDAY 11 APRIL, 2013, 6PM FOR 6:30PM  

 Rex Butler, John Nixon: A Communist Artist

This event is free. Bookings are unncessesary. 

Banner design generously provided by Annie Wu.

ST PAUL St Gallery is pleased to invite you to the opening of Reason and Rhyme, Thursday 29 September, 5:30pm.

Artists: Damiano Bertoli, Julian Dashper, Richard Frater and Roman Mitch, Starlie Geikie with Helen Walter, Simon Morris, Campbell Patterson, Hanna Tai, Mimi Tong, Jake Walker.
Curated by: Emily Cormack, Charlotte Huddleston, Amita Kirpalani.

Bringing together artists from Australia and New Zealand Reason and Rhyme explores the urge to structure and guide creative production through systems, grids and frameworks.

This is the second exhibition in a two part collaborative exchange project with Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne.  The exhibition at ST PAUL St investigates further how these systematic devices contain and channel creative impulse. It addresses the urge to locate oneself within the map or the doctrine, and to impose rules and structures across creative practice.

Work in this iteration extends upon the first exhibition with the inclusion of a collaborative work by Starlie Geikie and Architect Helen Walter, and a new on-site work by Richard Frater and artist and curator Roman Mitch.

Join us for an artist and curator talk 12.30pm Saturday 1 October ST PAUL St Gallery One

Next Wave Festival and Gertrude Contemporary are pleased to announce that Marcel Cooper and Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris have been selected to participate in the 2012 Emerging Curators Program. This collaborative curatorial team have recently relocated from Sydney to Melbourne and are eager to begin developing their proposed exhibition for launch in March 2012 at Gertrude Contemporary, in association with the 2012 Next Wave Festival.

Established in 2001,  the Emerging Curators Program offers participants the opportunity to develop a major exhibition project in close consultation with Gertrude Contemporary and Next Wave staff, as well as to develop promotion, presentation and project management skills.

The objective of the program is to professionally support emerging curators who are committed to a career in the field.  The program contributes to the growth of a rich and insightful enquiry into emerging artistic practice and contemporary curatorial practice, providing participants with professional development opportunities and valuable technical expertise.

Sriwhana Spong will discuss her work in conversation with Gertrude Curator Emily Cormack. The talk is presented as part of the exhibition Unnerved: The New Zealand Project at The National Gallery of Victoria.

VENUE: National Gallery of Victoria International, St. Kilda Rd, Melbourne
DATE: Saturday 5 February, 12.30pm

"Dynamic duo" appointed to curate 2012 Adelaide Biennial

Art Gallery of South Australia Director, Nick Mitzevich today announced the appointment of Alexie Glass-Kantor and Natasha Bullock as curators of the 2012 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art.

Nick Mitzevich said, “Natasha Bullock and Alexie Glass-Kantor are a dynamic duo with an innovative and exciting vision for the 2012 Adelaide Biennial. The exhibition they are planning will be spectacular. It will raise the bar and reaffirm the Adelaide Biennial’s position as the nation’s foremost statement on contemporary Australian art.”

Natasha Bullock is the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, while Alexie Glass-Kantor is the Director of Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne. Both are known as creative contributors to the contemporary visual arts scene through their work as curators and writers involved in cutting-edge art projects nationally and internationally.

The Adelaide Biennial was established in 1990 and is staged every two years by the Art Gallery of South Australia as the flagship visual arts event of the Adelaide Festival of Arts. It is dedicated to showcasing up-to-the-minute works by Australian artists and has previously been curated by some of this country’s leading curators who work independently of the Gallery on the project.

Glass-Kantor and Bullock will begin working immediately on the 2012 Biennial, which will feature some site-specific elements and direct responses to the state art collection. Alexie Glass-Kantor and Natasha Bullock stated, “The 2012 Adelaide Biennial will be about new works and new ways of showing what it means to create art in the contemporaneous moment. As curators, we are moved by artists who explore the texture of the contemporary, how ideas emerge and reform over time. We are looking forward to working with the Art Gallery of South Australia to produce exciting and strategic parallels and collisions between the spaces traditionally occupied by the Biennial and the Gallery’s collection spaces.”

Full details of the 2012 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art and the artists selected for inclusion will be revealed in the lead up to the 2012 Adelaide Festival. To arrange an interview with Alexie Glass-Kantor and Natasha Bullock contact: Miranda Starke Young 08 8207 7032 or 0409 919 510 [email protected] | Heidi Chamberlain 08 8207 7554 [email protected] Art Gallery of South Australia. North Terrace Adelaide.

Artist talk by Amiel Courtin-Wilson
In conversation with Emma Crimmings
Saturday 26 September 2015, 1pm

Join us at 1pm this Saturday the 26th of September for a floor talk by Amiel Courtin-Wilson about his current exhibition, The American Experiment. Courtin-Wilson will be joined in conversation by exhibition curator and Gertrude Contemporary Director Emma Crimmings. This program presents an opportunity to hear Courtin-Wilson speak directly to his work, and to explore the exhibition The American Experiment further.

Media release available here.