Archive 2008
8 February - 15 March
Opening 7 February, 6-8pm
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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”.
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.
Exhibition of finalists: Stephanie Cheek, Claire Gallagher, Melanie Irwin, Rachel Joy, Kaori Kato, Alesh Macak, Taree Mackenzie, Margaret Manchee, Lily Martin, Judith Perfect, Tyrone Renton, Ilia Rosli, Rohan Schwartz, Victoria Stamos, Michael Staniak, Simon Zoric
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.
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
Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm
Saturday and Sunday 12pm to 5pm
Once a year, the VCA School of Art studios are dismantled and the doors are thrown open to the public. Graduating students from each of the School’s departments – Drawing, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture and Spatial Practice – as well as those completing Honours and Postgraduate courses, present some of the highlights from their years of study. The resulting show is a feast of drawing, prints, photography, sculpture, painting, screen-based and digital media, reflecting the gamut of artistic expression.
The annual Graduate Exhibition represents an opportunity for friends, family and art lovers to enter this cultural laboratory, providing access to the intense artistic explorations and the creative energy that emits from the School of Art.