2008

Siemens-RMIT Fine Art Awards

RMIT Gallery

3 - 13 December 2008

In its eighth year, the prestigious Siemens-RMIT Fine Art Scholarship Awards enable students to further their careers in the field of fine arts by assisting with research and production costs.

Eight students will receive scholarships comprising five undergraduate travel scholarships and three postgraduate scholarships to a total of $32,000. One artist will also receive the $1000 Siemens Fine Arts Acquisition Award.

Winners of Siemens-RMIT Fine Art Scholarship Awards 2008

Undergraduate awards

Undergraduate Scholarship Awards of $2000 for travel go to:

• Bryony Crawford, from Honours Painting for her work ‘Ragamuffin’
• Beau Emmett, from BA, Sculpture, for the work “Seed Bed – Acconci’s Caravan”
• Carmenza Jimenez – Osorio, from year three Painting, with her work entitled ’Apartheid Harp ‘
• Bettina Garnier, who is a first year Painting student, for the computer based work ’ME Video’
• Georgina Humphries, from Honours Ceramics and Sculpture, with the work ’The Sketched Work-Site’

The judges had a very difficult decision and would like to acknowledge the quality of undergraduate works by Di Ellis, Harry Metcalf and Shoshanna Jordan for honourable mention.

Postgraduate awards

The three Postgraduate Scholarship Awards of $7000 each go to:

• Jeremy Bakker, MA candidate, with the group of works ‘Alone Together, Cluster and Quiet’
• Suzanne Pearce, MFA student, for the work ’Antecedents’
• Bruce Slatter, PHD candidate, with the three works ‘Displaced, Green Skip, and Offside’

Leah Heiss: liminal: diabetes + arsenic 

RMIT Gallery

6 - 22 November 2008

This exhibition presents a body of work that has been developed at the threshold of art and science.

Leah Heiss has spent the past 10 months working with nanotechnologists to develop wearable works which address the emotional in therapeutic design. The outcome is a collection of jewellery scale artefacts and vessels which are both delicate yet compelling in their curative applications. Two primary collections will be exhibited during liminal: diabetes + arsenic. Diabetes is a range of jewellery which allow insulin to be administered through the skin, replacing syringes. Arsenic encompasses a series of vessels which act to remove arsenic from water and are designed for people in transit in areas where arsenic is prevalent in well water (e.g. India, Bangladesh, United States).

Project supported by Arts Victoria in association with The Australian Network for Art and Technology and Nanotechnology Victoria.

Interaction

RMIT Gallery

30 October - 22 November 2008

Interaction celebrates the tenth anniversary of collaborative arts education in Hong Kong between the Hong Kong Art School and RMIT University’s School of Art.

The exhibition will present selected works from prominent Hong Kong staff who teach and have taught into the School of Art’s programs, alongside selected alumni whose practice has established them as significant emerging artists in Hong Kong. The collaboration between the two Art Schools began at the time of Hong Kong’s hand over from British colonial rule to its current status as a Special Administrative Region of China. The exhibition will provide an opportunity to assess artistic developments during this period of rapid cultural and sociological change.

Hannah Pang: Dreams from Loom and Needle 

RMIT Gallery

30 October - 21 November 2008

Fashion designer Hannah Pang creates beautiful fabrics through traditional technique “kesi” – an ancient weaving craft that creates a silk tapestry with cut designs resembling carved art work.

Pang worked in Australia for many years before relocating to Suzhou in China, home of kesi and is now creating beautiful collections using this and other techniques including shibori – a folded dyeing technique, hand painting and embroidery. This exhibition showcases special Chinese handcrafted fashion fabric from the traditional to contemporary.

Heat: Art and climate change

RMIT Gallery

12 September - 18 October 2008

This exhibition includes Australian and international artists working in a diverse range of media to demonstrate how contemporary international art practice is responding to the impacts of climate.

Heat: Art and Climate Change is a major international art exhibition curated by Dr Linda Williams (Senior Lecturer in Cultural History Theory, Research Leader- Arts and Sustainability, School of Art), Suzanne Davies (Director and Chief Curator, RMIT Gallery) and Sarah Morris (Exhibitions Coordinator, RMIT Gallery).

Artists: Max Eastley and David Buckland, Bonita Ely, Rew Hanks, Ash Keating and the 2020? Project, Janet Laurence, Sam Leach, Tony Lloyd, Anne Noble, Jill Orr, Simon Perry, Greg Pryor, Georgina Read, Martin Rieser, Klaus Rinke, Cameron Robbins, Philip Samartzis and Michael Vorfeld, Roslyn Taplin, Mark Wilson and Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir, Ken Yonetani.

Klaus Rinke’s recent drawings: Rhine • Ruhr • Loire • Danube • Pacific • Connection • Re-Australia

RMIT Gallery

11 July - 23 August 2008

Klaus Rinke forged his reputation as a leader of the avant-garde in Germany, using his own body as a measure of space and time and a metaphor for mortality.

Later Rinke extended this metaphor to include water: ladling water from the Rhine and all the oceans of the world. He was nicknamed Aquarius as a result.

An esteemed art educator, he taught for decades at the Düsseldorf Academy before taking up a stint at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles where he explored the phenomenon of duration with scientists and philosophers.

Rinke visited Australia for the first time in the late ’70s and was moved to begin a series of dense drawings of amorphous organic forms that he called his pre-embryonic diary.

envelop: kwodrent x farmwork 

RMIT Gallery

11 July - 23 August 2008

envelop features one of Asia’s most exciting young designers, Singapore-based Grace Tan.

After a successful career in fashion, Grace started kwodrent in 2003 as a personal project to explore fashion and design in a new light. Grace’s interpretation of form in fashion and nature creates a world of rigorous, repetitive shapes, curled and furled into elegant pieces. They are numbered in a series that has evolved each year for the past five years. In envelop, she continues to blur the lines between fashion, fine art and architecture.

Interested in promoting a dialogue through design, Grace has invited Singapore architecture firm FARMWORK to interpret the gallery space and structure in response to kwodrent; to envelop kwodrent within a new spatial experience just as kwodrent envelops the body in new ways.

Beyond Metal: Contemporary Australian Jewellery and Holloware

RMIT Gallery

5 June - 19 August 2008

Beyond Metal showcases the work of 27 of Australia’s finest jewellery and holloware practitioners.

Australia’s jewellery and holloware combines the raw aesthetic of the natural, the coarse, and the recycled, with the very clean modern lines of highly executed design. Beyond Metal showcases the work of 27 of Australia’s finest practitioners, taking us through a range of materials from precious metals to anodised aluminium, pearl buttons to embroidered stainless steel wire, twigs and beeswax to feathers and plastics. It is a dynamic show that demonstrates not just the elegant designs, but also the fine craftsmanship of artists including Carlier Makigawa, Simon Cottrell, Marian Hosking, Rowena Gough, Susan Cohn, Robert Foster, and Stephen Gallagher.

Beyond Metal has toured internationally to Chennai, New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur to great acclaim.

New Scientist Eureka Science Photography Prize 2007

RMIT Gallery

5 - 28 June 2008

What is science? The New Scientist Eureka Prize for Science Photography expands our view with an exhibition of 24 works from the 2007 prize.

This collection of diverse photographs of polymers in a cochlear ear, to cells dividing, jade icebergs in Antarctica to a levitated drop of blood, remind us that science includes the natural, physical, applied sciences, environmental issues, biodiversity, flora and fauna, medicine, astronomy, information technology, engineering and health science.

Curated by the Australian Museum and New Scientist magazine, the prize is awarded for the photograph that most effectively communicates an aspect of science. Equal first place was awarded to Rodney Vella for Crystal Orb and Steven Morton for Levitated Drop of Blood.

Black Robe, White Mist: Art of the Japanese Buddhist nun Rengetsu

RMIT Gallery

5 - 28 June 2008

Ōtagaki Rengetsu (or Lotus Moon 1791–1875) was one of very few successful female artists of 19th Century Japan.

Her tragic life inspired great creativity and this exhibition introduces us to not only her work as a poet and calligrapher but also her pottery and scroll-painting.

Largely drawn from international private collections, Black Robe, White Mist shows contemplative works of paper and clay inscribed with Rengetsu’s elegant poetry and unpretentious calligraphy.

Her work reflects the beauty of the imperfect and unconventional, and this is the first show outside Japan to focus solely on her art.

Come-In: Interior Design as a Contemporary Art Medium in Germany

RMIT Gallery

9 April - 17 May 2008

The international touring exhibition showcases the work of 25 young German artists, who explore the intersection between fine art and applied design.

The works have been created under three main themes: Get Together assembles rooms and objects which invite people to communicate and interact or not; Coming Home focuses on human behaviour, social and psychological patterns; and Living Fiction offers visionary designs, experimental scenarios and settings.

Curator: Renate Goldmann

The exhibition has been developed by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and is supported by the Goethe-Institut Australia.

Zandra Rhodes: A Lifelong Love Affair with Textiles

RMIT Gallery

11 February - 22 March 2008

A stunning exhibition of Zandra Rhodes’ unrivalled designs will be on display in the first major retrospective of the fashion doyen’s garments shown in Australia.

An innovative thinker in the fashion and design worlds, her influence and work continue to inspire designers and consumers worldwide. Over 40 original garments and textiles will be on display alongside Rhodes’ inspirational sketchbooks and paper patterns.

This exhibition is part of the 2008 L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival Cultural Program.