27.05.2013
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.
23.04.2013
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.
21.04.2013
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.
21.04.2013
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.
10.04.2013
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.
25.09.2011
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
22.06.2011
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.
04.02.2011
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
10.11.2010
"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 starkeyoung.miranda@artgallery.sa.gov.au | Heidi Chamberlain 08 8207 7554 chamberlain.heidi@artgallery.sa.gov.au Art Gallery of South Australia. North Terrace Adelaide.