2025 Artistic Program Announcement

Gertrude, Australia’s leading incubator of contemporary art, is excited to announce their 2025 Artistic Program: Past is Prologue: Four Decades of Gertrude.

Past is Prologue is a year-spanning program marking and reflecting on forty years of Gertrude. Across four interrelated exhibitions, contributing curators will chart the history of this organisation and its community, and commission new works by leading Australian visual artists. The final exhibition, Gertrude Studios 2025, will return to contemporary studio practice in the present moment.

In 2025, Gertrude will celebrate forty years as an organisation, cultural advocate, and evolving community. Unique as an organisation in Australia and the region, with dual emphasis as a space of both production and presentation, its history includes more than 300 artists participating in its 2-year Studio Program, presenting new projects and exhibitions by thousands of artists, and public programs and initiatives supporting generations of artists, writers, curators, and performers. 

Gertrude is developing a year-long program of exhibitions, public programs and publishing initiatives to contextualise the institution's evolution within the broader history of contemporary art and audiences across Naarm Melbourne, the country and the region. Central to this is a series of four exhibitions each focusing on a different decade.

In support of this program, Gertrude is running a Plus1 fundraising campaign. Thanks to Creative Australia, every dollar gifted to Gertrude will be matched until we reach our target of $50,000. All proceeds will go towards funding our 40th anniversary exhibitions and a new publication that celebrates the last 20 years of our work, following on from the 2005 publication A Short Ride in a Fast Machine (edited by Charlotte Day). Donate here.

Past is Prologue: Four Decades of Gertrude

Past is Prologue: Four Decades of Gertrude draws focus on the history of the organisation by seeking reverberations and resonance of the past in present times. Through the contributions of external and independent voices, the exhibition chapters affirm a multitude of histories and perspectives, even unstable histories, that create the armature of the organisation, and its communities and audiences, as it now stands.

– Mark Feary, Artistic Director

 Gertrude is excited to celebrate the significant milestone of 40 years with its community. We look forward to welcoming artists, staff, and audiences to share their memories and look to the future as the organisation continues to grow, change and reflect on our times.

– Tracy Burgess, Executive Director

1985-1995

A Fictional Retrospective: Gertrude’s First Decade 1985-1995
Curated by Sue Cramer and Emma Nixon

8 February–30 March 2025
Gertrude Contemporary

Borrowing from a title coined by artist Sandra Bridie in 1991, A Fictional Retrospective takes a speculative look at the span of artists’ works shown during Gertrude’s formative years, to shape a fresh and vital interpretation of this era. The exhibition will include artworks rarely seen in almost 40 years, yet which retain contemporary relevance through their diverse explorations of abstraction, cultural and artistic identities, the media, and the cinematic. Not claiming to be definitive of the period, the exhibition will evoke the liveliness of the Gertrude community during these foundational years and provide an opportunity to reflect on the nature of the gallery's contribution.

The approach taken acknowledges that there is no universal truth to the telling of history, and that subjectivity and chance will inevitably play a role in the curatorial process. This will be a large and expansive exhibition of more than thirty artists including, among others, Howard Arkley, Angela Brennan, Sandra Bridie, Jon Campbell, Tony Clark, Mikala Dwyer, Diena Georgetti, Michael Graf, Gail Hastings, Raafat Ishak, Mathew Jones, Anne-Marie May, Elizabeth Newman, Rose Nolan, David Noonan, Louise Paramor, Rosslynd Piggott, Nike Savvas, Robyn Stacey, Anne Zahalka and Constanze Zikos. The full list of artists will be announced in January 2025.

1995-2005

1964, 1969, 1977, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2025
Curated by Helen Hughes and Spiros Panigirakis

12 April – 8 June 2025
Gertrude Contemporary

1995-2005 saw artists, locally and globally, grappling with philosophical concepts of time, duration, and periodisation. The curatorial framework of 1964, 1969, 1977, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2025 triangulates the practices of three artists closely associated with Gertrude’s exhibition and studio programs between 1995 and 2005: Mutlu Çerkez, Damiano Bertoli, and Masato Takasaka. In this period, each artist developed a rigorous conceptual approach to making art that hinged upon bringing together two points in time. Building out from the distinct temporal logics of Çerkez, Bertoli, and Takasaka’s work, a selection of artists from the 1995-2005 period at Gertrude will be represented in this exhibition along multiple timelines.

Helen Hughes is deputy head of the Fine Art department at Monash University, and a senior lecturer in Art History, Theory and Curatorial Practice. Helen was a founding editor of Discipline, and is on the editorial boards of Memo Review, Index Journal, and Findings Journal. She worked as a curator at Gertrude Contemporary between 2014 and 2015, and as curator of research at Monash University Museum of Art between 2016 and 2018.

Spiros Panigirakis is an artist, educator, curator and writer. He is Head of Fine Art within the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University. He often works with groups in both a curatorial and collaborative capacity to address the social conditions of art. He was part of the founding committee of the artist-run initiative CLUBSproject and was chair of Un Projects, a national independent art publishing venture between 2018 - 2022. He is represented by Sarah Scout presents, Melbourne.

2005-2015

Of Stadiums and Construction Sites (Ne change rien pour que tout soit different)
Curated by Lisa Radford

21 June–10 August 2025
Gertrude Contemporary

Of Stadiums and Construction Sites (Ne change rien pour que tout soit different) will acknowledge a community to examine both polis and politics. Housing a cacophony of “speaking objects and artworks”, Radford will explore the space between the artworks and the discourse created and its legacies, visible or otherwise, not.

Lisa Radford's practice traverses writing, performance, sculpture and installation. In order to explore the shared socio-political space between images, place and people, Radford works with others as a way of examining what is both spoken and beyond speech. With Sam George, working together since 2008, they use conversation and oral histories to produce works that refer to documentary processes, shared narratives and coded language. The evolving project Concrete Archives, documents the shared experiences of 2 women: one Aboriginal, Yhonnie Scarce; the other non-Aboriginal, Radford and involves fieldwork to local and international sites of nuclear colonisation, genocide and memorialisation resulting in the production, to date of an editorial project with Art + Australia online and a major curatorial project The Image is not nothing (Concrete Archives) presented at ACE, Adelaide (2021) and later at the Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. She currently works in the Honours and Painting departments at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. She was a Gertrude Studio Artist with DAMP between 2009-201 and with Sam George from 2019-2022.

2015-2025

Bureaucracy of Feelings
Curated by Diego Ramírez

23 August – 12 October 2025
Gertrude Contemporary

Bureaucracy of Feelings contextualises the most recent decade of Gertrude by gathering artists that congregated at a different organisation: a smaller artist-run space that neighboured Gertrude for 17 years, until the latter relocated to its current address. This anthology is situated in the time 2018-2023, when the curator directed the aforementioned space. Bureaucracy of Feelings builds on this premise to chart artists that were actively building, shaping and resisting frameworks that directly or indirectly supported Gertrude’s activities over the last decade, by operating as arts administrators, board members, advisory panels, and volunteers in the broader artist led sector in tandem with their artistic practice.

Taking this curatorial premise as a departure point, Bureaucracy of Feelings considers the role that administrative language–KPIs, statements, policy, metrics, appointments, protocols–played in structural critiques of the past decade. Bureaucracy of Feelings believes this managerialism was a common and increasing response to social issues over the last ten years. Pondering whether this style, position or strategy has achieved its aims or simply increased the volume of rules, procedures, HR speech, forms and social media activity that engulfs everyday life. This query becomes a site of poetic and artistic production, scraping lyrical residue from this corporate excess to reconfigure its homogeneity.

Diego Ramírez is an artist with dreams, a writer with hopes and a facilitator with beliefs. He has shown locally at ACMI in partnership with Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Gertrude Glasshouse, West Space, Sydney Contemporary and Blakdot; and internationally at Deslave (Tijuana, Mexico), Human Resources (Los Angeles, USA), Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, USA), Art Central (Hong Kong), and Careof (Milan, Italy). Ramírez has written locally for the Art Gallery of Western Australia, Art + Australia, Disclaimer, MEMO and un Projects; and internationally with NECSUS (Germany) and BLUE journal (USA / France). He is a former Director of Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, and as a facilitator, he delivers workshops and mentorships. Ramírez regularly sits on panels, such as Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne and Creative Australia. He is represented by MARS Gallery, Melbourne.

Gertrude Studios 2025

8 November – 14 December 2025
Gertrude Contemporary

The annual Gertrude Studios exhibition is a collective snapshot of the practices supported by Gertrude, presenting new and recent works produced in the organisation's studios in 2025. The exhibition offers audiences the opportunity to experience a broad range of works from leading arts practitioners, while also considering material and conceptual developments in contemporary practice. Conceived by Gertrude staff alongside Gertrude studio artists, the exhibition provides a chance for the artists to experiment with divergent ideas or reflect upon recent productions in new configurations—all in conversation with the work of fellow practitioners.

Alexandra Peters, Chunxiao Qu, David Egan, Erin Hallyburton, Gabi Briggs, Grace Culley, Jenna Lee, Jordan Halsall, Moorina Bonini, Nadia Hernández, Rebecca Jensen, Renee Cosgrave, Roberta Joy Rich, Tara Denny, Tarik Ahlip and Yusi Zang.

Gertrude is supported by the generosity of a community of patrons and by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria; Creative Australia, the Federal Government's arts funding and advisory body; and through the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments; and by local councils the City of Yarra and the City of Darebin.

Past is Prologue is generously supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. Gertrude’s forthcoming publication is co-published by Perimeter and supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation.

Images:

Robyn Stacey, Ice, 1989
Cibachrome front mounted to plexiglass, 105 x 174 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney

Angela Brennan, Untitled, 1992
Oil on canvas board, 2 parts, 10 x 15 cm each
Courtesy of the artist, Niagara, Naarm Melbourne and The Commercial, Sydney

Anne-Marie May, Untitled (Constructions of Coloured Rays),1993
Felt on wooden stretcher, 30 x 30 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Lucreccia Quintanilla, Listening through walls: the operatives, 2015, Gertrude Contemporary, Naarm Melbourne. If People Powered Radio: 40 Years of 3CR, 2016, installation at Gertrude Contemporary. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Christo Crocker.

Conversation image from Nicholas Mangan, documentation of the exhibition "Colony" by Selina Ou, 2005.