2011

2112: Imagining the Future

RMIT Gallery

1 December 2011 - 28 January 2012

2112 Imagining the Future presents a range of images revealing how contemporary artists imagine the world might look in one hundred years’ time.

Tapping into general anxieties about an uncertain future and public concern about the consequences of climate change, 2112 Imagining the Future presents a range of images revealing how contemporary artists imagine the world might look in one hundred years’ time.

The exhibition responds to recent artworks that gravitate towards the realm of science fiction, a genre that explores ideas about the future and is highly developed in literature and film, but has hitherto been regarded as fairly marginal in the visual arts.

By resisting predictions of inevitable global disaster, or nuclear winters, the artworks explore the idea that although the unintended consequences of human actions have already begun to shape our future, the future is not fixed and is a domain that can shift and change according to human vision and consensus.

2112 Imagining the Future will feature works in a variety of media, exploring largely dystopian and occasionally utopian glimpses of a future world. This exhibition arises from research undertaken in the Globalization and Culture Program in the Global Cities Research Institute at RMIT University.

“Art depicts the present and the present rapidly transforms into the future. Art makes the present much more coherent and palpable than it usually appears. Seeing the present as it is, makes the future vaguely visible.” – Stephen Haley, artist.

Curator: Dr Linda Williams

Artists:

Philip Brophy, Justine Cooper, Keith Cottingham, Thomas Doyle, Lesley Duxbury, Kellyann Geurts, Stephen Haley, Kirsten Johannsen, Sam Leach, Tony Lloyd, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, Mariko Mori, Hisaharu Motoda, Lyndal Osborne, Patricia Piccinini, Philip Samartzis, Roman Signer, Superflex, Debbie Symons, Stephanie Valentin, Darren Wardle, Kenji Yanobe , Ken + Julia Yonetani, Now and When: Australian Urbanism

Tate Adams

RMIT Gallery

2 September - 5 November 2011

At the age of at 88, printmaker Tate Adams AM shows no sign of slowing down.

In a biography on his work, Director of the Perc Tucker Gallery Frances Thomson writes: “Now in his 80s, Adams has adopted gouache as his favoured medium. The intricacies of the woodblock have been abandoned. And the master has emerged.”

This exhibition, curated by Vanessa Gerrans, showcases a broad spectrum of work from one of Australia’s most acclaimed printmakers.

The Townsville based artist has a long connection with RMIT University.

Born in Ireland, Adams moved to Melbourne in 1952, after already making a name for himself as a printmaker. In 1960, he established the artist print department at RMIT University, where he taught for 22 years. Adams is acknowledged as both improving printmaking technical standards in printmaking and developing printmaking as a respected art form.

Adams’ students included the late George Baldessin (regarded as one of Australia’s best printmakers), Elizabeth Cross and Graeme Peebles. In 1966, he established Crossley Gallery, the only commercial gallery in Australia devoted exclusively to printmaking.

Together with Baldessin, Adams established Lyre Bird Press to publish high calibre livres d’artistes. After the closure of the Crossley Print Workshop in 1977; Adams continued to produce books with Lyre Bird Press in Melbourne until 2002.

When he moved to Townsville in 1989, Adams established Lyre Bird Press at James Cook University where he became an honourary lecturer. Lyre Bird Press continues to publish books in collaboration with Jenny Zimmer of Zimmer Editions.

Now in his late 80s, Adams is still engaged in his own artistic practice. In 2010 Adams was made the Inaugural Honorary Fellow of the Print Council of Australia.

Pandanus is an example of his latest work. On turning 80 and recognising he no longer had the sharp eyesight or physical co-ordination to continue with the highly detailed woodcuts that had established his reputation as a printmaker of stature, Adams launched into a series of black gouache paintings.

Jenny Zimmer writes; “There is little doubt that decades devoted to the discipline of the miniature art of wood engraving have fuelled the explosion of artistic energy that has characterised Tate Adam’s art over the past decades. How fortunate it is that he has re-acknowledged the power of the gesture and allowed himself the pleasure of exploiting it in a manner that summarises his experience as an artist and also identifies the type of art to which he himself responds most readily.” (Tate Adams, by Frances Thomson & Jenny Zimmer, Macmillan Art Publishing, 2010)

Space invaders: australian . street . stencils . posters . paste-ups . zines . stickers

RMIT Gallery

1 September - 5 November 2011

Drawn entirely from the collection of the National Gallery of Australia, this touring exhibition surveys the past 10 years of Australian street art.

To further explore the impact street art has had on the contemporary art scene, RMIT Gallery is commissioning a public art project with local street artists. The graffiti wall will take place in a laneway near RMIT Gallery during the exhibition. A public seminar, Vandals or Vanguards?, discussing the political, social and artistic aspects of street art and zines, will take place at the gallery on Monday September 26 with local and interstate artists and experts.

Space invaders looks at artists and their iconic street-based works at the point of their transition from the ephemeral to the collectable and from the street to the gallery.

Featuring 150 works by over 40 Australian artists, this exhibition celebrates the energy of street-based creativity and recognises street stencils, posters, paste-ups, zines and stickers as comprising a recent chapter in the development of Australian prints and drawings.

The exhibition is curated by Jaklyn Babington, Assistant Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books at the National Gallery of Australia. This exhibition is part of the National Gallery of Australia’s extensive program of sharing the national collection with the whole of Australia.

While modern hip-hop inspired graffiti reached Australia in the early 1980s, Australian street art is a relatively recent phenomenon.

A major strength of Australian street art is its ability to mix pop-culture imagery with political messages. From hard-hitting protest to political satire, clever combinations of sarcasm, mockery and parody, the means to mix art, politics and the street press is now in the hands of a new generation of Australian artists.

Space invaders also explores a paradox that has emerged in Australian street art in which an early flirtation with new technology has given way to a sentimentality for the traditional and the handmade.

While numerous approaches and diverse creative philosophies make up the Australian street art scene in 2010, the true and central constant has been the do-it-yourself ethos. Space invaders takes a close look at street art and the many ways that artists are getting up, getting out there and getting seen.

The exhibition is curated by Jaklyn Babington, Assistant Curator, International Prints, Drawings and Illustrated Books at the National Gallery of Australia. This exhibition is part of the National Gallery of Australia’s extensive program of sharing the national collection with the whole of Australia.

This exhibition is supported by the Contemporary Touring Initiative through Visions of Australia, an Australian Government program, and the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian Government and state and territory governments. The Cultural Partner for Space invaders: australian . street . stencils . posters . paste-ups . zines . stickers is NewActon/Nishi and Molonglo Group. The exhibition is also supported by Special Media Partner Triple J.

Gioielli d’Autore – Padova e la Scuola dell’oro

RMIT Gallery

17 June - 14 August 2011

Curated by the City of Padua, Gioielli d’Autore – Padova e la Scuola dell’oro features more than 150 works by 16 of the Padua jewellery school’s internationally acclaimed Italian jewellers.

Highlighting the importance of the city of Padua as a centre at the forefront of contemporary jewellery, this exhibition explores the creative development of artists whose innovative jewellery designs and education philosophy led to the creation of the renowned Padua Jewellery School, from its origins in the 1950s until today.

These stunning works reveal how the artists made their innovative choices based on research of materials, aiming at reaching harmonious balance and purity of form.

The story begins in the 1950s, on the workbenches of the gold-working section of the Istituto d’Arte “Pietro Selvatico”, in Italy’s Veneto region. There Mario Pinton taught and inspired his students in the creative process that turns ideas into objects. It was a Renaissance workshop where open conversations were at the basis of artistic research.

The exhibition follows the artistic paths of venerated jewellers Mario Pinton and Francesco Pavan, and their students, who have in turn become important names in the artistic world: Giorgio Cecchetto, Lucia Davanzo, Maria Rosa Franzin, Stefano Marchetti, Paolo Marcolongo, Paolo Maurizio, Barbara Paganin, Renzo Pasquale, Piergiuliano Reveane, Marco Rigovacca, Graziano Visintin, Alberta Vita, Annamaria Zanella and Alberto Zorzi.

Malte Wagenfeld – Aesthetics of Air

RMIT Gallery

13 April - 28 May 2011

Industrial designer Malte Wagenfeld will exhibit a series of installations using lasers and fog that give us a glimpse into the stunning complexity and beauty of air.

Malte Wagenfeld, who is also the Program Director of Industrial Design at RMIT University, will allow us to contemplate how we might work with this medium.

Air envelopes us in sensual effect. It can warm or chill us, it carries smell and sound; breezes stimulate the skin, and wind can literally move us; sometimes we can even taste the air. Although we cannot see air, it reveals its presence to the eye through swaying branches and windswept landscapes, and the particulates it carries – dust, smoke and fog. The latter is the focus of this installation: using fog, smoke, lasers and other devices air is rendered visible.

Chelle Macnaughtan – Spatial Listening

RMIT Gallery

13 April - 28 May 2011

Artist Chelle Macnaughtan’s floor-based collection of etched black aluminium panels invite gallery visitors to participate in the work by walking over the surface.

Chelle’s photographs are witnesses of someone else’s voice, that is, in the unknown municipal worker’s graphic marking of the date, they silently read the numbers as they work, or revisit the site to undertake further work. Furthermore, in the act of digital capture, and in reading the dates in the photographs, it is the reader’s own voice that is heard. Listening to the street sounds through and beyond the photographic content, such as pebbles, street debris, whether there is the evidence of lots of activity, or whether the stillness of mid winter is conveyed, cannot be isolated.

Ainslie Murray – Intangible Architecture

RMIT Gallery

13 April - 28 May 2011

Munich-based Sydney architect and artist Ainslie Murray’s work is an invisible architecture of the air using light and shadows to point to a new way of understanding space and the way we move in it.

In these works abstract spaces are formed by hand, characterised by time-taking detail and the repetitive, ritualistic gestures of pattern making. The moving, productive bodies that danced these structures into being have now departed, and all that remains is the physical trace of that process; the works themselves become a memory of inhabitation. Space quivers, fragile materialities float away leaving only the body in space, content in its imaginings of the spatial history of the built environment.

Revolutionising Anime: Production I.G’s pursuit of ultra-realistic fantasy

RMIT Gallery

21 January - 12 March 2011

The exhibition will explore how characters and props are conceived and designed before the complex process of animation begins.

Detailing the intricate process behind creating animation through storyboards, backgrounds and digital images from Production I.G films, such as Mamoru Oshii’s international cult hit Ghost in the Shell, and its sequel Innocence.

Viewers are taken behind the scenes of Production I.G, one of the world’s leading animation companies, recognised for its sophisticated animation techniques and ultra-realistic animation. Its films range from science fiction to historical fantasy and contain references to philosophy and Zen, addressing aesthetic and moral questions.

The first Japanese animated film was made about 90 years ago, and now Japan is the anime capital of the world. Using an international language and expressing a story in a way understood universally, anime presents viewers with an entirely different world of characters. Typically, these might be friends of the human race fighting for justice, or girls with magical powers.

The exhibition will explore how characters and props are conceived and designed before the complex process of animation begins. The storyboards, which are crucial to the staging of action, direction and planning, are then added. The backgrounds, the next stage of the process, contain some of the most intricate and form the basis of the 3D environment of the animation. Finally, the key animation drawings are added.

Curator: Masafumi Konomi (The Japan Foundation)

China and Revolution: History, Parody and Memory in Contemporary Art

RMIT Gallery

21 January - 19 March 2011

China and Revolution explores the relationship between poster art of the 1960s and 1970s and contemporary artists whose work engages a conscious dialogue with that period.

From 1966-1976, China experienced the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR). This involved a series of extraordinary political events, which destroyed lives, stopped careers, defined language and aesthetics, and has been framed retrospectively as 10 years of chaos.

For many Chinese individuals now aged over 40, the memory of those years and the knowledge of the effects that they had on their childhoods, adult relationships and career ambitions, are still acutely painful.

This exhibition emphasises connective possibilities between past revolutions and the present, and between history, memory and forgetting. It is part of an Australian Research Council-funded research project which investigates how historical works are produced outside the pale of state approvals, and what educative, emotional and restorative functions this work might achieve for China and the new generations.

China and Revolution features original posters from the University of Westminster’s extensive collection and works from collaborating artists Liu Dahong, Shen Jiawei, Li Gongming and Xu Weixin.

China and Revolution is co-curated by Professor Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Dean of the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, and Professor Harriet Evans, Coordinator of Asian Studies Research at the University of Westminster.

Professor Donald said that while the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution might have been antithetical to the practice of art, the “propaganda” poster art produced as a result in the 1960s and 1970s inspired many contemporary Chinese artists.

“The exhibition examines a period of Chinese history that is rarely examined closely and often dismissed as ’10 years of chaos’,” Professor Donald said.

“It aims to open dialogue between the past and present through the work from artists who experienced the revolution first-hand, as well as through the display of original political posters carrying political messages to the Chinese masses.”

RMIT Gallery Director Suzanne Davies said visitors will be able to immerse themselves in vibrant audio and visual reminders of the Cultural Revolution.

“We anticipate the animated rendition of the radio call to daily exercises that broadcasted in China at the time will bring back powerful memories for many.”

Curators: Professor Stephanie Hemelryk Donald & Professor Harriet Evans

JAPAN: Kingdom of Characters

RMIT Gallery

5 January - 9 March 2011

Astro Boy, Hello Kitty, Pokémon and Pocket Monsters – Welcome to the world of Japanese characters.

The 60-year history of Japan since the end of World War II is mirrored by the Japanese fondness for characters, which have permeated Japanese life from manga to TV and computer games, and especially commercial character goods. Interest in Japanese subculture, particularly anime and manga, has been increasing rapidly all over the world.

This exhibition focuses on the country’s obsession with characters and the social reality they reflect, and also examines the impact they have had on Japanese society. In recent years, interest in Japanese subculture, particularly in anime and manga, has dramatically grown all over the world. What exactly are “characters”? Why do characters appear and become popular? What kind of social reality do they reflect?

Manga and anime characters permeate every aspect of Japanese life. Countless goods even in the most out of the way shops are emblazoned with images of Hello Kitty and Pocket Monsters. According to The Japan Foundation, Japan is alone in the world in its unusual fondness for characters.

It has been shown in surveys that being with a character induces tranquillity; whereas in the past this calming effect would have been realised through personal relationships, in contemporary society where bonds of trust and communication are weakened, people establish stronger ties with characters.

Perhaps fondness for characters can be interpreted in terms of traditional aesthetic sensibility. Murakami Takashi, one of Japan’s most important contemporary artists, has suggested that anime and the expression of characters in two dimensions with an excess of open space and a lack of depth is an extension of Japanese painting techniques such as ukiyo-e.

The difference between Japanese and American characters is striking. American characters tend to emerge from cartoons and have facial features that express a strong emotion, whereas Japanese characters lack any expression.

Aihara Hiroyuki, President, Character Research Institute Co, said that the “expressionless” nature of Japanese characters is closely connected to the Japanese mentality.

“As an explanation for the bond and tranquillity people sense from characters, one might cite Japanese religious beliefs. Thus, the world of characters might be compared to the myriad of gods in Japanese culture.”

With this in mind, the character mascots often seen casually hanging from Japanese girls’ mobile phones and bags might be seen as a kind of “protective amulet”, and the fact that lining their rooms with characters creates a sense of calmness doesn’t seem so strange.

Focusing on the theme “Characters and the Japanese,” this exhibition will showcase, through visual images and panels, characters commonly known to Japanese people that have triggered fads.

RMIT Gallery will also boast a life size reproduction of a character-loving high school girl’s typical room, overflowing with the Hello Kitty characters.

This delightful exhibition will introduce the world of characters in a broader sense and examine their impact on Japanese society.

Curator: Masafumi Konomi (The Japan Foundation)