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.

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
21 March - 19 April

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.

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.

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.

Opening night Thursday 19 June
20 June - 12 July
What happens when the digital optical scanner is used for the photographic reproduction of three-dimensional objects? The flatbed scanner seems an inappropriate technology for such a task. But what results is a complex aesthetic phenomenon that prompts a profound consideration of the differences between an analogue, lens-based culture of photography and an emergent screen-based digital culture.

A relatively new technology, the flatbed scanner is generally not associated with the reproduction of tactile objects and it is not commonly used as a vehicle for artistic expression. This form of image making in relation to the history of photography and the current state of digital production is yet to be fully explored within contemporary art theory and criticism. Faust’s PhD aims to show that the scope of this enquiry includes a significant contemporary theoretical debate concerned with libido and the philosophy of desire, with its repertoire of new aesthetic concepts identified with “sensation” and “affect”.

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.