2004

Artificial Happiness

RMIT Gallery

7 October - 6 November 2004

This exhibition reflected on the rapid development of the Chinese economy in recent years.

More and more Chinese people have access to a disposable income and Chinese consumerism is booming. Pleasure and happiness are now there for the taking – though at a price. Products which induce happiness – legally or illegally – especially amongst the young and affluent, are being developed, produced and marketed at rocket speed. Through diverse media, Chinese artists test and explore this social phenomena.

Curators: Zhang Zhaohui and Suzanne Davies

Artists: Bard Breivik, He Jie, Wen Peng, Yany Qian, Tammy Wong, Zhang Xiaotao, Zeng Yicheng. Curated by Zhang Zhaohui and Suzanne Davies.

German Video Art 2000–2002

RMIT Gallery

16 August - 25 September 2004

The German Video Art exhibition displayed works of artists such as Jung-Min Bae, Peter Becker/Stefan Holmeier, Sandra Draschaft/Marc Thurow, Cornelia Erdmann, Beate Geissler/Oliver Sann, Sven Harguth, Hartmut Jahn, Min Kim, Susanne Kutter, Eric Lanz, Bernd Mattiebe, Bjørn Melhus, Matthias Müller, Claudia-Aline Müller-Hermann/Ruth Katharina Scheel, Bianca Rampas, Anke Schäfer, Harald Schleicher, Nora Schmidt, Reni Scholz, Jan Verbeek and Anna Werkmeister.

The exhibition was opened by Mr Alessio Cavallaro who is a leading figure in electronic media arts in Australia, primarily as a producer, curator, consultant, and publications editor in film, video, digital media, radio and sound arts.

Curator: Bjorn Melhus

Photo Art

RMIT Gallery

16 August - 25 September 2004

An exhibition telling the German story.

This exhibition has eight groups of photographs forming a series of mini ‘retrospectives’, (as the curator calls them) by some key German photographers.  These retrospectives – which were selected in consultation with the artists –  include major works by Dieter Appelt, Astrid Klein, Sigmar Polke and Katarina Sieverding (to name a few). The show ranges from 1969 to 1992 and so the trajectory in German photography that it charts includes body art and performance, conceptualism and minimalism.

“For those viewers more familiar with the likes of contemporary superstars such as Thomas Struth and Andres Gursky, this exhibition will be something of a revelation I suspect. Part of that revelation is the experience of being able to relate to these photographs ‘in the flesh’.  It is probably unfashionable to say this, but no matter how often I see photographs on the internet or in books there is nothing that beats being in the physical presence of a photograph that is intended – as these are – to be seen on a gallery wall.  Issues of scale, the physicality of the images, how you move into relationship with them in the gallery spaces – in short, the ‘dynamics of viewing’ – are all things that are only possible when you are standing in a room with the works themselves.”

–  Dr Isobel Crombie, opening speech of the Photo Art exhibition

Curator: Suzanne Davies

Penetralia: Art and Psychoanalysis in Melbourne, 1940–2004

RMIT Gallery

30 June - 7 August 2004

Art and psychoanalysis under the scope.

The works of prominent artists including Albert Tucker, Sidney Nolan and Vivienne Shark LeWitt will be showcased in an exhibition exploring the link between art and psychoanalysis.

Penetralia: Art and Psychoanalysis in Melbourne, 1940 – 2004 looks at the impact of psychoanalysis on Australian art through the work of leading psychoanalysts practicing in Australia Clara Geroe, Janet Nield and psychiatrist Reginald Ellery. Included in the exhibition, which showcased documentary photographs, architectural models and plans, historical film, video, painting, prints, and drawings, there were works by Charles Blackman, John Brack, Richard Dunn, Joy Hester, Lyndal Jones, Linda Marrinon, Helen Maudsley, Elizabeth Newman, Sidney Nolan, Vivienne Shark LeWitt, Edwin Tanner, Albert Tucker, Danila Vassilieff, Ken Whisson and Caroline Williams.

Geroe, Ellery and Nield started a movement in the 1940s in Australia that took Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic ideas out of the clinic into the wider community.

The exhibition had three dimensions.

The first focused on the stories of the three individuals, selectively looking at how psychoanalytic ideas, theory and practice have influenced intellectual life in Melbourne, in art, architecture and education, well beyond clinical concerns.

The second dimension of the exhibition looked at contemporary expressions of the relationship between psychoanalysis and art, drawing on visual material, representations of the unconscious.

The final component connected themes of past and present.  A series of forums ran concurrently with the exhibition to reflect on the ways psychoanalysis can inform cultural frameworks and explore how ideas about cultural life can expand our understanding of psychoanalysis itself.

Curator: Suzanne Davies

Domains: Contemporary Israeli Design

RMIT Gallery

10 May - 12 June 2004

Israeli designers show no boundaries.

A staircase with no support, innovative lighting and other intriguing designs will be on show for the first time in Melbourne when an Israeli contemporary design exhibition comes to RMIT Gallery next month.

The Domains – Contemporary Israeli Design, curated by Nirith Nelson includes some of Israel’s most talented designers. The designs are based on everyday items. Sharon Polishuk, from the Israel Embassy, in Australia, said the exhibition allowed Israeli design to be appreciated on a global scale. “The unique aesthetic of Israeli design in terms of Jewish diaspora influence as well as the development of this aesthetic with ‘no boundary’, or a new country with no ‘rules’, is behind the development of the design movement,” Mr Polishuk said.

RMIT Gallery director Suzanne Davies said the exhibition aims to increase awareness of Israeli design and to underscore the lively dialogue between designers globally. Thirteen designers showed their works during the exhibition. In designer Hagai Harduff’s work ‘Staircase with no support’, he shows a modular staircase supported only by the shape and support of the stair, instead of the traditional frame. Raviv Lifshitz couples the recycling process with the ready-made, transforming daily items like umbrellas or ironing tables into one-off pieces.  Lifshitz gives the objects a new identity. Adi Marom contemplates the idea of the mini-house with a minimalist, flexible approach, taking a playful look at the problem of space in the transitory residences of the 21st century.

Contemporary Lacquer Art from Taiwan

RMIT Gallery

10 May - 5 June 2004

Discover the secrets behind lacquer ware from the experts.

“There is a mounting wave of popular fascination with traditional Asian art and craft techniques which is matched by an intrigued recognition of the various modernisms that underpin form and content,” Director of RMIT Gallery, Suzanne Davies said. “Lacquer ware has a long history as a highly-skilled technique for creating astonishingly beautiful effects. This exhibition represents an unprecedented opportunity for the Australian public to experience how contemporary artists negotiate and reinterpret this age-old traditional craft.”

Ms Davies added that RMIT Gallery has an established respect for the contemporary application of traditional craft skills, as seen in the ground breaking exhibition at the gallery in October 2000 of painted porcelain busts by celebrated contemporary Australian-Chinese artist Ah Xian.

The exhibition featured lacquer ware by more than 28 established and new Taiwanese artisans, many of whom have won major prizes.

The Taiwanese lacquer ware exhibition was initiated by the National Taiwan Craft Research Institute and supported by the Taiwan Council for Cultural Affairs, Executive Yuan.

Curator: Wang, Hsien-Chih

Terrible Presence Next Wave Festival

RMIT Gallery

10 May - 5 June 2004

Animated horror film installation by Joel Zika.

Terrible Presence is an animated, multi–screen, surround-sound installation that adapts the classic horror film into an immersive experience. Critical theory of the horror genre is traditionally from a sociological perspective. However, the narrative of the horror film is often propelled as much by the cinematic devices deployed. These simple devices are taken to new levels; inanimate objects are given lives of their own (both literally and conceptually). From the image of the possessed car in John Carpenter’s ‘Christine’ to the brooding mansion in Roger Corman’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ we see the extent of the freedom allowed to these genres and their subsequent impact.

Terrible Presence by animator and installation artist Joel Zika focuses on the universal identification of the viewer with these visual symbols of the genre. Through the investigation of cinematography and scenography Joel Zika establishes a new temporal dialogue with the audience. The work features a superb surround soundtrack and score by renowned Melbourne music and sound art producer Michael Theiler.

On exhibition at RMIT Gallery in RMIT’s heritage-listed Storey Hall, the work took advantage of the foreboding architectural interiors, which dominate the buildings’ aesthetic. This site–specific installation of the work features a triptych of projections, creating an altarpiece–like composition whilst using the Gothic window frames to add yet another layer to be explored.

Behind the Lines: The Year’s Best Cartoons

RMIT Gallery

15 March - 24 April 2004

Year’s Best Cartoons 2003

Behind the Lines is a selection of the top works entered in the National Museum of Australia’s 2003 Political Cartooning Competition and is part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. This exhibition reflects on 2003 with the wit and humour of Australia’s most imaginative political critics. The exhibition provides a fascinating survey of the major events of 2003 that were shaping Australia. The exhibition features over one hundred works by Australia’s sharpest wits: Sean Leahy, Bill Leak, Matthew Martin, Ron Tandberg, Cathy Wilcox, Alan Moir, Michael Atchison, Judy Horacek, Peter Nicholson, Geoff Pryor and Mark Knight. The most turbulent moments of the public life are satirised including: Liberal and Labor leadership battles; John Howard’s decision to remain Prime Minister; the Governor General’s resignation; Pauline Hanson’s imprisonment; the treatment of asylum seekers; 58,000 sheep stranded in the Middle East; and the division of Australian society over the war debate.

‘Starring’ in the exhibition are John Howard, Pauline Hanson, George Bush, Peter Costello, Simon Crean, Philip Ruddock, Kim Beazley, Mark Latham, Peter Beattie, Tony Abbott, Bob Carr et al.

Australians have always enjoyed a love-hate relationship with their politicians and political satire is an important part of our culture. Australian cartoonists, armed with a healthy supply of cynicism, are often regarded as the best in the world; respected and admired even by the politicians whom they send up.

Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer

RMIT Gallery

15 March - 24 April 2004

Bernhard Willhelm, Collections 2001–2004

An audiovisual exhibition of internationally renowned young fashion designer Bernard Willhelm. Multiple screens and a large scale projection present his fanciful catwalk shows and avant-garde performances. Willhelm’s recent men’s and women’s collections play with the fantasy of fairytales and childhood memories in the use of iconic patterns and recycled fabric. The exhibition also features a collaborative film made with Olaf Breuning, a master of constructed scenarios, that provokes contrasting feelings of discomfort and fascination, repulsion and seduction.

Berhard Willhelm now lives and works in Paris but was born in Ulm, Germany. His collections convey something distinctly Germanic about them, a quality that highlights his antipathy to the clichés of the international fashion culture. He continues to draw consciously on his native country’s traditional clothing style which he reiterates and deconstructs in his work.

The approach of this young designer defies simple classification. His fashion questions our notion of the familiar and pushes the limits of what can be worn and what clothing signifies.

Curator: Suzanne Davies

Presented by the L’Oreal Melbourne International Fashion Festival and RMIT Gallery.

The Magic Touch

RMIT Gallery

10 - 28 February 2004

Exhibition with Gerd Rothmann, renowned Munich Goldsmith.

Gerd Rothmann’s work explores the relationship of jewellery and the human body through the concept of duplication and reflection. In Ten fingers at the neck the leitmotif of the fingerprint as the unique mark of the individual pervades the work, forming an impressed pattern of human marks in this articulated necklace. Rothmann suggests that the fingerprints on this necklace were those of his client’s lovers, creating an intensely personal record of a relationship while also bringing a sinister shade to the work, as the heavy square links circle and imprint themselves on the soft skin of the neck. The forensic anxiety implicit in these skin casts is further underlined by their translation into gold, the material of desire and possession, and the signifier of value and exchange.

Curator: Gerd Rothmann

Georg Baselitz

RMIT Gallery

5 January - 28 February 2004

Georg Baselitz, Printed Works 1965-1992

An artist once expelled from an East German art school for ‘socio-political immaturity’ is the focus of this exhibition.

“Reality is the picture. It is definitely not IN the picture.” – Georg Baselitz

This exhibition of 117 original prints includes over eighty works on paper, including woodcuts, engravings, linocuts and drypoint etchings.  Baselitz uses colour and form to deconstruct pictorial conventions.

Isolation and fragmentation have always been key themes in Baselitz’s works, which are instantly recognizable for usually having their subjects placed upside-down. The artist adopted this technique in the late 1960s as a way of overcoming the representational nature of his work whilst not becoming abstract.

Curator: Georg Baselitz

Brought by the Goethe Institute and the Institute of Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa)