Free Speaking
Agatha Gothe-Snape

Agatha Gothe-Snape's conceptual practice stems from improvisational performance. Taking on many forms such as prosaic performances (including dance), perfunctory drawings, looped PowerPoint slide shows, workshops, texts (including correspondence, found texts as well as texts of a poetic character), visual scores and collaboratively produced art objects, her work draws upon and records interpersonal and spatio-emotional exchanges around art and art contexts. The material manifestation of Gothe-Snape’s practise often involves paper. Marked by a minimalist idealisation of colour and language and a frontal visual tactility, her work results from agency being given to impulsive responses. Gothe-Snape’s process is without fixed limits and fosters transparency and her work inhabits spaces that are both physical and non-physical. It occupies thresholds that are negotiable, flirting with several things at once. 

Gothe-Snape has exhibited in major institutional exhibitions in Australia. In 2014 she exhibited in Art as a Verb curated by Charlotte Day at Monash University Museum of Art, FRAMED MOVEMENTS curated by Hannah Mathews at Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, NSW Visual Arts Fellowship for Emerging Artists, at Artspace, NSW, Trace: Performance and its Documents, curated by Bree Richards, at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane and Octopus 14  Nothing Beside Remains curated by Tara McDowell. Previously, she has exhibited in Melbourne Now at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Reinventing the Wheel: The Readymade Century, curated by Max Delany with Charlotte Day, Francis E. Parker and Patrice Sharkey at Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; Octopus 13 On This Day Alone, curated by Glenn Barkley, at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (all 2013); Contemporary Australia: Women, curated by Julie Ewington et al at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; MCA Collection Volume 1, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (both 2012); Power to the People, Contemporary Conceptualism and the Object in Art, curated by Hannah Matthews at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2011); Primavera, curated by Katie Dyer at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney and New 010, curated by Juliana Engberg at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (both 2010).

Gothe-Snape's work is held in a number of public collections in Australia, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney; the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at the University of Western Australia, Perth; Griffith University Art Collection, Brisbane; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

She was the founder of The Cosmic Battle for your Heart (2010-2011) with Mitch Cairns and Kelly Doley and has a long-time collaboration and functional relationship with performer and poet Brian Fuata as WrongSolo (2002 – ongoing). Together with George Egerton-Warburton she programmed A4PDF in the doorway to Gertrude Contemporary.