There are these moments
Bridie Lunney

There are these moments was an exhibition in the Studio 12 Project Space by 2014 Gertrude Studio Artist Bridie Lunney.

Rupturing the Pristine

Bridie Lunney’s art practice, comprising sculpture, installation and durational performance, hums on the emotional register somewhere between restraint and release, suggesting a barely withheld kinetic energy. She composes objects in space like a poet selecting words for a stanza – instinctively phrasing alliteration and assonance but refusing rhyme and allowing for discord.  Using steel, concrete, glass and leather, her objects reveal the malleability of their physical properties while suggesting sensuous correlations to the human body. These installations, whether activated by the bodies of performers or by the gaze of the viewer, capture moments of tension that are at once intimate and distant, menacing and seductive.

This exhibition, There are these moments, was designed as a transitive space, a holding bay for a series of objects to be deployed in a suite of exhibitions in Melbourne and Sydney: a solo exhibition at the Gertrude Contemporary project space at Melbourne Art Fair, a curated group exhibition at Platform, the John Fries and Substation prize exhibitions, and the Collins Street Aesop store. The installation in Studio 12 adapted and changed throughout this exhibition, with new objects added and others removed, a process which mirrors the metamorphoses suggested by the objects themselves.

The above text is an extract from the catalogue essay by Eleanor Zeichner, participant in the Gertrude Contemporary – ARTAND Australia 2014 Emerging Writers Program mentored by Anne Loxley.  

Bridie Lunney develops works intuitively in relation to site. Durational performative and sculptural gestures suggest psychological shifts and reconfigure hierarchical relationships between architectural space, objects and the body. These altered relationships suggest poetic mimicry of internal psychological spaces, acknowledging the body as a conduit between our cognitive selves and the physical world.

Upcoming exhibitions included There is a way, if we want, into everything, Gertrude Contemporary Project Space at Melbourne Art Fair and John Fries Award, Sydney.

selected exhibitions include The place where the fire is kept, Phoenix foyer commission, Arcadian Revery for White Night, Queen Victoria Gardens 2014; 'This Endless Becoming' for Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 'Drawing Weight' for 30 Ways with Time and Space, Performance Space, Sydney, Propositions in collaboration with Torie Nimmervoll at Gertrude Contemporary 2013; Space, WestSpace and Pieces of Eight; Place of Assembly, Melbourne International Arts Festival;The ceiling has lost it’s solidity, Manysquaremetres 2012; A Condition of Change, Sarah Scout; Suspension Test, Conical 2011; Non-Negotiable, Project Space; Risk Potential Die Ecke, Santiago, Chile 2010 and Once more with Feeling, Margaret Lawrence Gallery 2009.

A Gertrude Contemporary Studio Artist for 2013-2015, Lunney taught Contemporary Practice, Sculpture and Drawing at Monash Art, Design and Architecture.