Gertrude Studios 2008

In 2008, Gertrude Contemporary presented the annual Gertrude Studios exhibition. Featuring new work by 15 of Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces’ studio artists, this exhibition presented a unique selection of some of Australia’s most talented artists. Encompassing a wide range of media and ideas, the 2008 exhibition was rich with exciting new projects.

The exhibition featured a sculptural work by Ardi Gunawan, who created a viral installation, with sculptural elements spreading throughout the exhibition. By building and positioning objects at a variety of points within the exhibition, Gunawan created dynamic and unanticipated relationships, interruptions and interfaces with other works in the exhibition.

Kate Just’s work proved similarly affecting. The artist created The Garden of Interior Delights after identifying anatomical and uterine forms in Hieronymus Bosch’s sixteenth-century work The Garden of Earthly Delights. Kate Just drew on these forms - knitting a portion of the painting and expanding it so that it became an enormous, three-dimensional sculpture reminiscent of a fantastical knitted uterus.

Simon Pericich's work, How to Hack the Modern World was a series of step-by-step guides that illustrate such infamous urban myths as "How to: extract money from an ATM using a fake eftpos card", or "How to: charge your cell phone using a lemon and lucozade". Presented as lo-fi videos these works were then uploaded onto You Tube, to instigate and complicate the already confused on-line community.

This exhibition also featured a collection of new text paintings by Richard Lewer; drawings by Mark Hilton; a large canvas by Noël Skryzpczak; works on glass by Pat Foster and Jen Berean; a diptych by painter Jackson Slattery. Matthew Shannon created a time capsule with moon rocks and Ben Armstrong created new etchings on glass. Matt Griffin created a sculptural collage. The exhibition also featured new photographic work by Sanja Pahoki, and video works by Kel Glaister and Brodie Ellis.

This vast sampler of current practice provided an exciting opportunity to view work by Melbourne’s most ambitious and promising artists. Furthermore, there was also an Open Studio day on 6 December from 2-5.30 when the public were invited to view the studios, and engage more thoroughly with each artists’ practice, and gain privileged insights into their work.