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Black Swans, Red Herrings and White Elephants
Curated by Julian White
Ruth Johnstone, Julie-Anne Milinski, Marion Piper, Andrew Tetzlaff, Ross Waller, Julian White
16 October – 1 November 2008
Opening on Thursday 16 October 6-8pm
View catalogue essay
Link to Curator's site
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1. BLACK SWAN
Black swan (Cygnus Atratus). A large water bird found mostly in the southern regions of Australia.
2. BLACK SWAN
A mathematic/scientific term. 'Black swan theory' refers to a
large-impact, hard-to-predict, and rare events.
3. BLACK SWAN
A colloquialism. Used amongst artists in the late
20th century that refers to the perceived importance of finding new
meanings in art.
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1. RED HERRING
Herrings (Clupea-).
Small silver fish found in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, Baltic,
and Mediterranean Seas. Red Herring refers to the fish after it has
been cured and smoked.
2. RED HERRING
A literary term. In story-telling a 'red herring' is a narrative tool
used to distract the reader or viewer from another element of the plot
which is later revealed.
3. RED HERRING
A derogatory term. Used amongst 21st century artists to describe those that pine for 'old school' art making and believe
that all art should be beautiful, uplifting and uncomplicated.
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1. WHITE ELEPHANT.
Elephant (Elephantidae). A large mammal found in most countries in Africa, also Bangladesh,
India, Sri Lanka, Indochina and Indonesia.
The white or albino elephant is an elephant born with the hereditary
condition albinism (hypopigmentary congenital disorder).
2. WHITE ELEPHANT
An everyday term. An object that the cost of
keeping / maintaining outweighs the rewards of owning, although it's
perceived value prohibits it being disowned.
3. WHITE ELEPHANT
A journalistic term. Refers to the cost
and effort involved in creating and caring for the art object when the actual art practice is conceptually driven.
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Prohibition
Pamela Mei-Leng See [Brisbane/Beijing]
25 September – 11 October 2008
Opening on Thursday 25 September 6-8pm
Using the traditional folk art of paper cutting as a starting point See asks audiences to consider the stark contrast in interpretations applicable to contemporary social phenomena.
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Drawing
Matthew Roberts
4 September – 18 September 2008
Opening on Thursday 4 September 6-8pm
Roberts will meld together classic Caravaggio and Durer like imagery with contemporary visual media examples. Reducing the whole history of western image making in to simple common types, war, beauty etc. The deliberate use of large scale charcoal drawings, considered almost naive by contemporary arts plethora of mediums, serves to deliver up to the audience a universal art 'type', charcoal being a firmly established medium in everything from dawn of civilization cave drawings to primary school art lessons to community life drawing classes and even painting mock ups by the great masters of 20th century art.
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Pauser
Ry David Bradley
14 August – 30 August 2008
Opening on Thursday 14 August 6-8pm
As a painter, Rys fundamental aim is to bring something to the digital medium which is lacking - subtle nuance in colour (it's something that has to be seen off screen). The process used of remixing and sampling other images to be able to mix and create these colours is what makes it possible (plus a pigment paint based printing process). However on the surface of the work, Ry is letting something else enter the process (it's arguable if it's even possible to keep it out) - his own personal humor and pathos.
View Catalogue Essay
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Shadow Play
Georgina Cue
24 July – 9 August 2008
Opening on Thursday 24 July 6-8pm
Using the found imagery of archived police photos of crime scenes, Cue will re-interpret the images with free hand embroidery, entertaining the transformation of an archetypal image through a repetitive process.
View Catalogue Essay
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The Big Smoke
Curated by Julian White
Essay by Penny Peckham
Noah Grosz, Kathryn McCool, Jacques Soddell, Tara Gilbee & Andrew Goodman, Greg Pritchard
3 July – 19 July 2008
Opening on Thursday 3 July 6-8pm
A monument can be defined as a structure erected to commemorate a famous person or event or a site or structure that is of historical or cultural importance or interest. Although it is not implicit in it's meaning the common sense idea of a monument is less invested in its referent then it is in the monument itself. The Big Smoke brings together 6 artists that have defined through their practice the monument as a reminder rather then a signifier. Particularly 'monuments' within regional Victoria that highlight its partially symbiotic, partially antithetical relationship with Melbourne's urban society.
Supported by the City of Melbourne.
View Catalogue Essay
View Curator's Notes
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cake boys: photographs, in two series
Drew Pettifer
12th June – 28th June 2008
Opening on Thursday 12 June 6-8pm
Closing Reception on Saturday 28 June 4-6pm
A photographic series of highly sexualised images of young men. Produced in the documentary photographic artistic tradition with the significant twist that half of the images will be printed on to cake icing.
View Catalogue Essay
Drew Pettifer:
http://www.drewpettifer.com
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Tracts
Curated by Ben Byrne
Adam Costenoble, Ben Byrne (Curator), Matt Chaumont and Thembi Soddell
22nd May – 7th June 2008
Opening on Thursday 22 May 6-9pm
Tracts is a group exhibition that explores the role of sound in our understanding and experience of the spaces around us. Through interweavings of sound and sculpture, the works in Tracts explore the convergence and interplay of physical, virtual, societal, emotional and psychological space.
The exhibition presents four individual, yet related, sound works that each engage directly with the gallery. Through the interplay of physical installation and sound fields it is intended that sounds from each work saturate and dissect the space, overlapping one another and making for an immersive, visceral experience.
View Catalogue Essay
This project is supported by the Next Wave Festival.
2008.nextwave.org.au/fest...
exp-melb.blogspot.com/2008...
This exhibition has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
This exhibition would also like to acknowledge the kind sponsorship of:
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Objects in Space:
Insides Outside
Anna-Maria O'Keefe
22nd May – 7th June 2008
Opening on Thursday 22 May 6-9pm
"Objects in Space is a series of surprising art encounters dispersed across the city. Cheeky interventions into the functional spaces of Melbourne’s galleries, such as video art in bookshelves, installations under stairs and hidden drawings, make up a scattered swarm of quiet moments, forming a miniaturised and parasitic version of the visual arts program of the 2008 Next Wave Festival." (click here for full article from 2008.nextwave.org.au)
This project is supported by the Next Wave Festival.
www.objectsinspace.net
2008.nextwave.org.au/fest...
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No Hypocritical Rubbish: in/out of the western perspective
Stone Lee
1st May – 17th May 2008
Opening on Thursday 1 May 6-8pm
Lee will use newspaper to sculpt a group of popular animals, such as a sheep cow, and lion, in imitation of a soft toy but on a larger scale. His work addresses the act of representation and the role of the signifier in understanding meaning.
View Catalogue Essay
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Fly Me to the Moon
Tatjana Plitt, Lorraine Heller-Nicholas, Luke Devine
10th April – 26th April 2008
Opening Thurs 10th April6-8pm
Fly Me to the Moon is a heady dive into the unknown waters of love and passion. A tentative testing of the waters will only reveal surface qualities. The clarity, temperature, depth, and danger are only to be discovered on immersion. Whether we sink or swim, doggy paddle, achieve victory laps, or succumb to an exquisite end, cannot be known without first getting thoroughly wet.
Three artists take issue with the representation of romantic relationships and the matrix of love’s allure through video, drawing and photography.
View catalogue essay
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These Endless Days
Kel Glaister
13th March – 5th April 2008
Opening Thursday 13th March 6 - 8pm
These endless days is an installation based around a narrative of sex, death and failure. It’s a black romantic comedy, or a foiled denouement for an old-hat mob story. The work creates an allegory of meaning production through necrophilia doubled, where a failed sexual encounter stands in for the elusive possibility of direct communication.
These endless days investigates conditions of communication through a sweetly morbid narrative. The inescapable failures entailed in the passage of meaning are here characterised as an already impossible intimacy, a melancholic and absurd fling.
Kel Glaister has exhibited in recent exhibitions including Floats like a brick doesn’t, BUS 2007, Nonchalantly unimpressed, Victoria Park Gallery 2007 and Everything, again, Firstdraft, 2007. She has had solo shows at Kings, West Space, Seventh and Trocadero, and curated several group exhibitions.
Supported by the City of Melbourne through the Arts Grants Program
View catalogue essay
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Blindside Vs. Bus: Rumble in the Library
4th March - 29th March 2008
Opening Tuesday 4th March 5.30-7.30pm
This exhibition was kindly supported by the City of Melbourne. It was a collaborative initiative of The City Library, The City of Melbourne, Bus and Blindside.
The exhibition was held in the Melbourne City Library, located at 253 Flinders Lane, Melbourne.
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Blue Series
Yvette Coppersmith
21st February – 8th March 2008
Opening Thursday 21st February 6 - 8pm
They met randomly at an opening in Fitzroy, 2 March 2007. He was a curator, she - a painter.
The subsequent interactions led to the crystallization of this exhibition. An exchange of the usual social roles and power dynamics was part motive. The other - an involuntary realisation that the artist had met her muse
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Debut IV
Santina Amato, Andrew Cerchez, Emma J Davis, Rosie Miller, Michelle Neal, Natalie Ryan, Abby Seymour
31st January – 16th February 2008
Opening Thursday 31st January 6 - 8pm
DEBUT IV in 2008 brings a Whitmans's sampler of new artistic talent from the recnt graduate exhibitions of Melbourne's metropolitan art schools. Curated by Marion Piper, Debut IV aims to act as a bridging event for students entering the professional art scene by creating a forum for their work that is independent of the educational institution they studied at. Blindside, as an artist-run space, has the appropriate location and creative community to provide networking apportunities for these emerging artist, and at the same time creating relationships between the exhibiting artists and their peers.
Emma Davis: http://www.ninebeginnings.org/take
View catalogue essay
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