Siri Hayes, Thicket, 2006. Courtesy of Gallerysmith, Melbourne.

Richard Grigg, Amanda Marburg, Siri Hayes, Mark Rodda

Opening night Thursday 7 Feb

Featuring new works by four Melbourne-based artists Richard Grigg, Siri Hayes, Amanda Marburg and Mark Rodda Where in the woods? explores how nature acts as an elemental substance within us and how we utilise these untamed aspects to exorcise our myths and our animalistic imaginings. Although this group of artists all have diverse practices and work in a variety of media from photography, painting, video and sculpture, there are many interesting points of convergence and a shared aim to foster a process which is based on exploring the pictorial history of an ‘imagined’ nature in art.

Where in the woods? seeks to objectify the sense of insecurity we sometimes feel when confronted with nature, referencing in turn the artists in history who have created works along these particular lines.

DAMP, A fete worse than death, 2004. Courtesy of Uplands Gallery, Melbourne.

A Constructed World, Chicks on Speed, Damp, Pat Foster and Jen Berean, The Hotham Street Ladies, The Kingpins, The M.O.S.T., Norma, The Safari Team, santomatteo, spat + loogie and Soda_Jerk.

Opening night Thursday 20 March

Group Group Show is a group show curated by a group of people about other groups. The artists included in the show use methods of working collaboratively in diverse and socially engaging ways within varying contexts of contemporary art, and the exhibition will explore the working process of groups of people working on shared artistic outcomes.

Group Group Show presents four Victorian based collaborative artist groups alongside a number of international and interstate collaborative artists. Curated by Melbourne art group DAMP, the exhibition intends to highlight and link recent contemporary global art practices that utilise methods of working together as a group to produce works both inside and outside of the gallery system. The exhibition includes various media that actively engages with audiences – responding to both individual and group desires.

Marc Rogerson, sculptural lights.

Marc Rogerson, Philip Samartzis and Dave Brown

Opening night Thursday 24 April
26 April - 3 May

Plump is a trio featuring sculptor Marc Rogerson and sound artists Philip Samartzis and Dave Brown. The intention of Plump is to create site-specific installations of kinetic, illuminated sculpture and sound art.

Cluster is specifically created for the VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery space and comprises a hundred or more suspended illuminated ‘pods’ moved by air currents and driven by electric fans. Activated by a computer program, the fans are triggered by motion sensors detecting the presence and movement of visitors. The attendant soundscape is drawn from both samples of the sound of the pods knocking together and various sound constructions created by the sound artists. For the visitor to the installation, the experience of sound, touch and light will have an encompassing sensory effect. The viewer will be encouraged to touch the sculptures and interact with the installation. Cluster will attempt to create an environment within the installation wherein the laws of classical physics are suspended.

The Movement Movement (Jessica Rose and Jenn Goodwin) Run the ROM, Social Sculpture 2007 Film Still from Run the ROM directed by Nick de Pencier Photo Credit: Sandy Nicholson

Part of the 2008 Next Wave Festival

Opening night Tuesday 13 May
14 May - 14 June

Unsheltered Workshops is a major exhibition, residency and workshop program for the 2008 Next Wave Festival. Involving five artists and artist groups from Canada, New Zealand, the United States and Australia, all of whom undertake workshopping activities with the general public and/or specific social groups, the exhibition will explore the dynamics of community exchange and collaborative action, presenting people and not just objects as points of discourse and interrogation. The exhibition will address the overall Next Wave Festival theme Closer Together, looking at new ideas of closeness and its conflicted nature: as a catalyst for connectedness, community and exchange, but also of claustrophobia, confrontation and invasion.

Chantal Faust, Pleasure Machines, 2008

Opening night Thursday 19 June
20 June - 12 July

Salote Tawale, Looking for loofah, detail, 2007.

Louisa Bufardeci, Bindi Cole, Lorraine Connelly-Northey, Eliza Hutchison, Wietske Maas, Kate Smith, Salote Tawale, Annie Wu. Curated by Samantha Comte, Jirra Lulla Harvey, Kate Rhodes and Meredith Turnbull.
Presented in association with the National Council of Women of Victoria

Opening night Wednesday 16 July
18 July - 16 August

2008 marks a centenary of women’s franchise in Victoria. To commemorate the centenary and highlight the artistic achievements of women in Victoria, the VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery in partnership with the National Council of Women Victoria (NCWV) will present Are we there yet? featuring specially commissioned works by eight women artists.

While celebrating a specific moment in Victoria’s political and social history – the passing of the Adult Suffrage Bill in 1908 – Are we there yet? invites the artists and curators to explore the impact of the early suffrage movement, the subsumed histories of both Indigenous and non-indigenous Australian women, and current issues that face women today. These issues are reflected in the platforms developed by the International Council of Women and ongoing work by the NCWV, including the status of women within human rights, equal opportunities and employment, health, migration, education and communication.

Artur Źmijewski, Them, 2007. Courtesy of Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich.

Simone Slee, Mikala Dwyer, Artur Zmijewski
Curator: Rebecca Coates

Opening night Thursday 4 September
5 September - 4 October

In 1970, a group of students working with one of Poland’s seminal art teachers, Professor Grzegorz Kowalski, participated in a series of exercises he had devised for his famous Kowalnia studio, entitled Common Space, Private Space. Using visual symbols, the exercises attempted to teach dialogue and collective task-solving. The journey, as much as the outcome, became the motivating force.

Each of the participants in this exhibition, Australian artists Mikala Dwyer and Simone Slee, and Polish artist Artur Źmijewski, approaches their art practice through a similar series of propositions, exercises and endeavours. Through performance, video, occasional objects, and labyrinthine immersive installation, each artist explores this process and its ensuing outcome. Frequently done with humour, or irony, such an approach in no way lessens the ultimate outcome, or the process by which it is derived. The possibility of failure is always present, and in fact, becomes an integral part of the process, one that allows the real possibility that the making of art is a socially effective instrument.

Greg Creek and Spiros Panigirakis

Opening night Thursday 9 October
10 October - 8 November

VCA Projects is part of an ongoing commitment by the VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery to showcase new works by established Melbourne based practitioners, providing an opportunity for contemporary artists to create a new body of work on a large scale specifically designed for the gallery space. VCA Projects supports artists working with site-specific concerns to pursue developmental research into contemporary modes of practice within a variety of media from sculpture, installation and spatial practice to photography, video, painting and drawing. VCA Projects for 2008 will feature two discrete solo projects by Greg Creek and Spiros Panigirakis.

Opening night Thursday 20 November
21 - 30 November