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Victorian College of the Arts

 

40 Years of VCA

FACING EAST: TRINH VU

18 February to 5 March
Opening night celebration: Thursday 17 February, 6.00 to 8.00pm

Derived from experimentation with geometric coordinates of natural forms and topology in three-dimensional digital modeling, the paper-based sculptures in this exhibition are complex structures of multiple modules arranged in a pattern of interconnecting spirals, swirls and circles reminiscent of the principles of the golden angle in both nature and mathematics. This project aims at resolving the distinction between representation and procedure.
 
Natural forms are not simply imitated but a starting point for a complex creative process that combines sacred geometry, mathematical beauty, construction method and material choice allowing different methods of creating sculptural forms to unfold. As this fusion takes place familiar forms are presented as new structures that are both natural and artificial, synthetic yet organic displaying natural intersections of systems in nature, mathematics and computation. This project also looks at the way in which we relate to these systems and how we can make use of them as our creative instruments.

MARGARET SEAWORTHY GOTHIC

11 March to  9 April
Opening Celebration: Thursday 10 March 6 - 8pm

Artists: COLIN DUNCAN, NIGEL LENDON, ANDREW LIVERSIDGE, DANE MITCHELL, MATTHEW SHANNON

Curator: Matthew Shannon

Margaret Seaworthy Gothic is an exhibition of work by five contemporary artists working locally, nationally and internationally that takes its name from a typeface designed by the seminal conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner in the 1970s. Each of the artists in the show works in lineages of conceptual art, and shares a keen interest in the dematerialisation of art. Margaret Seaworthy Gothic is concerned with how works that are in essence immaterial can take form, how the invisible manifests itself and how information is given a body. The exhibition will feature a mixture of new work commissioned specifically for the show, and reconstructions or recreations of past work.

For Margaret Seaworthy Gothic, Colin Duncan, Nigel Lendon, Andrew Liversidge, Dane Mitchell and Matthew Shannon present work that occupies the gallery as a conceit of relationships, a cybernetic atmosphere and a theatre of aliases. Matter is not banished in the world, but it does take on spooky properties – its scale and identity having been permanently displaced by the network of communications within which it exists.

BLACK MOUNTAIN: Rozalind Drummond and Stuart Bailey

Opening: Thursday 14 April, 6 - 8pm
Exhibition dates: 15 April to 14 May

“Interior: Stuart’s studio late afternoon.

We sit down to watch an old Coen brother’s film called, ‘Fargo’. I really enjoy the scenes shot in empty fields and roads thick with fake snow in the depth of movie winter in Minnesota, which is basically the whole film. Stuart’s studio is overflowing with flakes of polystyrene, floating in the room, landing on furniture, gathering on the floor he focuses on sweeping them up into a pile, it creates a low level cloud.

We keep driving, I stare out the window of the car, and see a man tying plastic bags two fig trees. I get out of the car and ask if it’s ok for me to photograph his garden, he asks why, not actually wanting an answer, and is happy for me to be there. The plastic bags are at odds with the foliage of the trees, I find this visually irresistible.

Off the highway a giant boulder, being moved from one location to another, entirely incongruous, in the middle of a road, bound to a truck like a carcass with ropes and chains. We stand there in front of the rock, admiring the shape, talking about our project, how do you describe, collaborations, how do our respective projects and work evolve? It begins with long conversations, that dip back and forth, about things left out, things thrown in, discoveries, houses, buildings, backyards, random objects and people, seemingly insignificant daily discoveries."

Personal View: Photographs 1978-1986
Artist: Janine Burke

20 May to 11 June
Opening celebration: Thursday 19 May, 6.00pm - 8.00pm
 
Best known as an author and art historian, 'Personal View: Photographs 1978–1986' reveals Janine Burke as an ‘accidental photographer’ who recorded the artists, critics, writers and curators who were her friends and colleagues during a dynamic period in Australian art.  Burke was part of a milieu that generated the women’s art movement, feminist exhibitions, radical journals, experimental galleries and provocative art. The common denominator in all these ventures were networks of intense friendships, a catalyst that helped to change the culture. 'Personal View' is a casual, intimate, visual memoir that includes Albert Tucker, Andrea Hull, Sue Ford, Allan Mitelman, Jenny Watson, John Nixon, Frances Lindsay and Paul Taylor. It is a snapshot of an era. Monash University Publishing will launch a book of the photographs to coincide with the exhibition.

Vacuum
Artist: Janina Green

20 May to 11 June
Opening celebration: Thursday 19 May, 6.00pm - 8.00pm

Vacuum is a set of 14 vintage chromogenic prints  made  in 1993 and shown at the CCP in Melbourne and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts.
  
The images were made by superimposing photographed contemporary figures onto illustrations from ‘Home Beautiful’ magazines of the 50s, 60s and 70s. They were composed on a Macintosh 11CX  with Photoshop 2.5,  then made into colour negatives and enlarged on photographic paper.

It has been suggested that the middle class white housewife is the dominant model of femininity and her role has been constructed around domestic cleanliness. Her home has been the setting for her performance as virtuous wife and mother. But housework also taints the character of the woman, linking femininity with dirtiness and linking dirtiness to the "abject" and to those things we are constantly spitting out and wiping away.

This twin notion of the feminine as simultaneously pure yet intrinsically soiled is at the heart of Janina Green’s densely collaged layered photographs with their richly retro modernist colour schemes of an idealistic era and the lone silhouetted almost boyish figure drawing us into the present.

Milano
Artist: Chris Koller

20 May to 11 June
Opening celebration: Thursday 19 May, 6.00pm - 8.00pm

This 1999 series of photographs is the second installment of the trilogy ‘Spatial Narratives’, in which Christopher Köller explored the way urban spaces of three cities (Melbourne, Milan and Mexico) are continuously undergoing a process of formation by cultural, economic and political forces. The Milano series was produced during Köller’s time in the Arts Council’s former Milan studio.

Milan was a Celtic settlement then a Roman fortification, before becoming a medieval walled city under the rule of the Visconti and Sforza families. In the late 18th century the conquering Napoleon ordered it to be opened up with broad boulevards radiating outwards. In the 20th century it was devastated in World War 11 before being revived as a major centre of manufacturing and a new centre of design in the post-war era, while maintaining its strong regional culture.

Köller was fascinated by Milan’s layered past and sought out sites where past struggles subtly impinge on the contemporary reality. His moody photographs reveal contrasts between the rustic brick and stonework of Roman and medieval structures and the refined and rigorously resolved finance houses and stock exchange built under fascism in the 1930s and meticulously maintained to this day. They draw attention to the contrasts between the sleek centre of fashion where desire is evoked and elaborated, and the chaotic areas of the city in which development has stalled and street crime is common.

2011 Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship

The VCA School of Art is proud to announce Ross Coulter is the 2011 recipient. 

Exhibition dates: 15 July - 23 July 2011

Finalists: Kay Abude, Ross Coulter, Inez De Vega, Greatest Hits, Katya Grokhovsky, Melanie Irwin, Dane Lovett, William Mackinnon, Kristin McIver, Alasdair McLuckie, Adelle Mills, Zofia Nowicka, Valentina Palonen, Ilia Rosli, Mia Salsjo, Rohan Schwartz, Lydia Wegner, Simon Zoric.

The Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch Travelling Fellowship is awarded biennially, through the generosity of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, AC, DBE. The Fellowship has maintained the spirit of the National Gallery Travelling Scholarship, which was first awarded to John Longstaff in 1887. Since that time it was offered every three years until 1968 when it became a biennial event.

The Travelling Fellowship is designed to allow a young artist to travel and study overseas at a particularly important period in his or her career. The award in 2011 is $25,000.

Future Possible

Exhibition Dates: 9 September to 8 October

Artists: Sue Dodd, Kim Donaldson, Melanie Irwin, Alina Ślesińska, Vassiliea Stylianidou

Curator: Kim Donaldson

Future Possible reflects on a world in a time of uncertainty. Our present confronts us with seemingly endless restrictions real and imagined. It is an environment where remnants of the past and visions of the future collide, creating the unfamiliar, the unknown and the unfinished. Time, the spaces we occupy, the ways that we communicate and even the weather produce restrictive boundaries. Somehow, undeterred by all this, we still dream. From the pragmatic to the outrageous, speculations emerge.

Future Possible brings together the proposals of five women artists. They are, from Berlin and Athens, Vassiliea Stylianidou, from Warsaw, Alina Ślesińska (1922-1994) through the visualisations of Łukasz Kwietniewski and Łukasz Engel and from Melbourne, Sue Dodd, Kim Donaldson and Melanie Irwin.

Sue Dodd acknowledges the support of Victoria University.

Vassiliea Stylianidou's visit to Melbourne is generously supported by the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne & Victoria.

The Solo Projects: Andreas Exner and Rose Nolan

Exhibition dates: 13 October - 12 November 2011

Presented by Melbourne Festival and Margaret Lawrence Gallery

Andreas Exner is one of Germany’s most acclaimed contemporary artists and sculptors. Over the course of almost three decades he has constructed a body of work that is both readily familiar and utterly distinctive. Trafficking in the substances of the everyday – the cars, clothes, wardrobes and curtains that furnish our life – Exner literally fills these objects with new colours and components, disrupting their easy recognisability and forcing us to reassess our relationship to them from a new perspective.

Rose Nolan shares Exner’s interest in the stuff of our day-to-day existence, although hers is a more explicitly crafted aesthetic. Beginning with simple colour schemes and basic materials that typified the work of the early Constructivists, she uses quirks of context to drag this visual schema into a rigidly contemporary setting. Playfully positioning the more formal, politically active tendencies of these foundations against the irresistible, banal everyday-ness of it all, Nolan throws into question the value we attribute to labour, culture and, above all, art.

Andreas Exner’s visit to Melbourne is generously supported by SIMPLOT. Rose Nolan's project is generously supported by the Australia Council. She is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

School of Art Graduate Exhibition

Opening Celebration: Monday 21 November, 6-8pm
Exhibition Dates: 22 - 27 November 2011

Graduating students from each of the School’s studios – Drawing, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture and Spatial Practice – as well as those completing Honours and the Postgraduate Diploma of Visual Art – present some of the highlights from their year 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.

School of Art Masters Exhibition

Opening Celebration: Monday 5 December, 6-8pm
Exhibition Dates: 6 – 11 December 2011

At the VCA School of Art Masters Exhibition, presented by graduating students from the Master of Visual Art and Master of Fine Art, audiences will navigate a dynamic exhibition roaming through the Margaret Lawrence Gallery into the  School of Art studios. Showcasing both coursework and research students, this exhibition is akin to 33 individual  shows. It celebrates the students’ artistic imagination, extensive theoretical knowledge and mastery of their practical and technological skills.