Exhibits,
Nadine Christensen, Ruth Cummins, Rozalind Drummond, Elein Fleiss, Yanni Florence, Anna Jankovic, Shelley Lasica, Jacob Raupach, Mark Rodda, (on Island Island), Travis MacDonald Future ourselves, scenes
Opening: November 12th
Link to project on Island Island.
The impetus for the project, ‘Future ourselves, scenes’ evolved over a number of weeks, while at home, thinking of ways to connect with other artists, who too, would be reflecting on the pandemic and how it has immersed us all one way or another. Tilting our experiences and perception of time, during this existential crisis. A creative remedy, as it were, a heartening idea and plan to anchor a distinctly strange experience.
‘I’m okay, how are you?
Thanks for asking, thanks for asking
I’m okay, how are you?
I hope you’re okay too’
What time is it?
I invited nine other artists, whose work I find compelling to have free play and consider the ambiguity of imagining another nearby, a new future. How would they each envisage this fragile unknown? How will it would it be different to now?
What to make of all this?
Each day would bring more and more news of the global pandemic, a cacophony of information. Progressively we began avoiding places once shared with strangers or any environment that could possibly subject us to a chance encounter. We were ordered to remain in self-confinement, in our homes, leaving only for brief periods of time. The place I live in very abruptly became my everyday place, in which to work, learn, celebrate, and lament and just more-simultaneously.
The implications of everyday objects, a medley of books, music playing, news, instagram, cooking, gazing, cups of tea, the furniture looks dusty… Fuelled by the changed circumstances we are in, I began looking back in time as a way of moving forward. A re-discovery, of books on my shelves about modernist counter culture, on the pages fragments of ideals and propositions that although dated and somewhat misplaced, leave traces in contemporary life. Utopia, like any tool, is conjured from a future but it is destined to remain just out of reach of the technological self.
“It is not possible yet to make and live in a new society; but it is possible to catch a glimpse of what it could be like, to sketch out a model of future possibilities”
Link to project on Island Island.
Nadine Christensen is an artist and teacher whose practice has painting at its core. She has been an active member of the Melbourne art community since graduating from the VCA in 1998. As well as being involved in artist run exhibitions, curatorial and publishing projects, she has held solo exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra and has participated in group shows across Australia and internationally including Tokyo, Los Angeles, Tijuana, Turin (Italy), Paris and Venice. Her work has been featured in survey exhibitions including Australian Painting Today, at Tarra Warra Museum of Art, This and other worlds, an exhibition of drawing practices at the National Gallery of Victoria; New04 at ACCA and This was the future at Heide Museum of Modern Art.
Ruth Cummins is an artist from Wagga Wagga, NSW who currently lives and works in Naarm, Melbourne. Working within the framework of textiles, painting and sculpture Ruth hybridizes objects of utility, sentimentality and the decorative. Ruth’s work uses humour and form to highlight and expose the absurdities of contemporary domestic life.
Rozalind Drummond is an artist based in Melbourne. Her work in photography video and performance explores constructed spaces, natural environments and landscape. Encompassing an abiding interest in spatiality, each body of work produced obliquely refers to spaces of socialization and how groups of people come together and inhabit locations. Since the early 1990s she has practiced as artist, teacher and curator, realizing projects in museums, galleries, contemporary art spaces, artist run initiatives and alternative art schools, both independently and collaboratively. She has exhibited widely both in Australia and internationally.
Yanni Florence is photographer and book designer. He co-founded and designed Pataphysics Magazine in 1989. He has published seven photographic monographs. His first solo exhibition, Tram Windows, was held at ReadingRoom Gallery in 2019 and his work is being included in
the 2020 NGV Triennial.
Elein Fleiss was born in April 1968 in Boulogne-Billancourt (France). Fleiss has been active as a curator, publisher, editor and writer. Since 1992 Fleiss co-founded and published Purple magazine with Olivier Zahm and from 2003, The Purple Journal, Les Cahiers Purple and Les Chroniques Purple.
In 1998 Fleiss began her photographic work. Her photos and essays have appeared in Purple, Big, Ryuko Tsushin, Brutus, Ecocolo, Here and There, Brutus, Kurachi No Techo and Home. She recently took part in the exhibition Fashion and Photography since the 90’s at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Japan.
Anna Jankovic is a Melbourne based Architect, Director of SIMULAA and Lecturer Industry Fellow at the School of Architecture & Urban Design at RMIT.
Jacob Raupach is an artist and publisher based in Melbourne. Jacob’s practice exists at the intersections of photographs, artist books, sculpture and installation. Through these mediums he investigates the invisibility of
labour and the relationship between natural and societal environments, and the ways in which art (work) can help to alter and rewrite our perceptions of place and history.
Mark Rodda was born in Tasmania and lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) at the University of Tasmania, Launceston, in 1994 and Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) at RMIT, Melbourne in 1999. He is a winner of the Glover Prize and his work is included the MONA, Artbank, and Australian Catholic University Collections.
Travis MacDonald is an artist and musician based in Melbourne, Australia. His work falls between abstraction, realistic representation, and sculpture. He creates his paints from hand-ground pigments mixed with various materials to yield a multitude of textures. MacDonald has regularly exhibited in galleries and public institutions throughout Australia. His work was featured in the 2018 Melbourne Art Fair and in 2016, in Painting. More Painting at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.
For more than 30 years, Shelley Lasica has pushed the confines of dance, choreography and performance. Her practice is defined by an enduring interest in the context and situations of presenting choreography.