2012

New Olds: Design between Tradition and Innovation

RMIT Gallery

6 December 2012 - 9 March 2013

This exhibition explores the relationship between tradition and innovation in contemporary design around the themes of materials, construction, configuration, production, and traditional use.

Fifty-seven designers and design teams from Germany, other European countries, USA and Israel enter into an intensive dialogue about aspects of the “new” and the “old” in a range of objects and groups of objects. These combine traditional methods in products meant for contemporary consumers.

Three years back, when the German designer and curator Volker Albus Karlsruhe, visited India for the first time, its abundant craftsmanship and rich tradition inspired him and the idea of the exhibition New Olds took its genesis.

Observing that many designers from countries such as India look towards the west for inspiration, he realised there exists a much deeper tradition which is often forgotten. The products on display in the exhibition reveal that innovative inspirations can be connected to traditions.

Many of the design motifs that are depicted as “new” actually derive from an historical context and existing idiom of one country or culture but represent a new interpretation of traditional forms. The New Olds exhibition aims to show the international and complex nature of this discourse in contemporary design, with works inspired by historical references and symbols ranging from deer antlers to the cuckoo clock, traditional porcelain, Baroque objects and the more recent history of Bauhaus and Memphis.

New Olds looks at aspects of the “new” and the “old” in a range of objects and groups of objects, discusses differences and new combinations, presents trends in recycling and redesign, and looks at the transformation of design classics and traditional ways of using new materials.

Design has a short and highly successful history in the West. It quickly became a key feature of a collective understanding of culture, and is correspondingly appreciated and communicated. Outside the western hemisphere , what are seen as successful idioms are copied and varied, but many of the motifs that are sold as “new” actually derive from a historical context and formal idiom, and are self-contained products of one country or culture, representing a new interpretation of traditional forms.

Curator: Volker Albus Karlsruhe

Experimenta Speak to Me

RMIT Gallery

13 September - 17 November 2012

Experimenta Speak to Me is an invitation to consider what it means, at this time, to be together.

Our ability to communicate with each other anywhere, all of the time – ultimate interconnectivity – has been with us for some time. In a rapidly changing technological field, how do we now consider these new relationships to the world, technology and each other? What does this connectedness now offer us? Visitors and participants will be inspired to investigate this question as they enjoy the work in the Biennial.

The exhibition features significant Australian and international artists, and has a focus on the Asia Pacific region. The exhibition extends out from RMIT Gallery to travel along the spine of Swanston St, where visitors will encounter a number of key venues across the City of Melbourne, culminating at Federation Square where there will be a new work from artists Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries commissioned by Federation Square and Experimenta for the big screen.

The main exhibition space is centred at RMIT Gallery and will feature up to eighteen works, fourteen of which are being premiered to Australian audiences.

One of the key international artworks selected for Experimenta Speak to Me is the Australian premier of a site-specific installation by internationally renowned Taiwanese artist Shih Chieh Huang. Huang creates installations that merge common, store-bought artificial materials and dissected electronics to create interactive, organic living environments and sculptures that often feature vivid, phosphorescent lighting systems.

Artists presenting at RMIT Gallery:

Ryoko Aoki and Zon Ito (Japan), Sylvie Blocher (France), Natalie Bookchin (USA), Christopher Fulham (Australia), Johan Grimonprez (Belgium), Shih Chieh Huang (Taiwan), Hiroshi Ishiguro (Japan), Tristan Jalleh (Australia), Eugenia Lim (Australia), Jess MacNeil (Australia), Wade Marynowsky (Australia), Archie Moore (Australia), Kate Murphy (Australia), Dominic Redfern (Australia), Nina Ross (Australia), Scenocosme (France), Nobuhiro Shimura (Japan), Soda_Jerk (Australia), Charlie Sofo (Australia), Grant Stevens (Australia), Kenji Suzuki (Japan), Katie Turnbull (Australia), Takayuki Yamamoto (Japan).

Kindness/Udarta. Australia-India Cultural Exchange

RMIT Gallery

29 June - 25 August 2012

Featuring more than 140 writers, visual artists and musicians from Australia and India, this exhibition is a lasting record of a window into two decades of ongoing artistic and cultural connections.

There is perhaps no better way of understanding other cultures than by their art, and Kindness/Udarta. Australia-India Cultural Exchange, an RMIT Gallery touring exhibition, celebrates 20 years of the Australia-India Council’s successful program of cultural exchanges between Indian and Australian visual artists, writers and musicians.

Kindness/Udarta. Australia-India Cultural Exchange was inaugurated in New Delhi on 16 March 2012 by Dr Karan Singh, President, Indian Council for Cultural Relations at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

The exhibition then toured to Canberra, where it was opened by Senator the Hon Bob Carr Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs on 31 May as part of the Australia-India Council’s 20th Anniversary celebrations.

RMIT Gallery Director Suzanne Davies curated the exhibition and accompanying publication Kindness/Udarta. Australia India Cultural Exchange in honour of the 20th anniversary.

She said that the exhibition demonstrates the resonance and strength of relationships built on the cross-cultural dialogues which the arts can so readily engender.

It was agreed from the outset that a response to the notion of kindness would underpin the project, recognizing that such a notion, while ostensibly simple and compelling, would generate vastly different responses given its variable connotations in different contexts.

The contributing artists to Kindness/Udarta represent a significant sample of creative people who have experienced each other’s culture, visited each other’s country, worked together, and built relationships based on friendship and mutual respect.

Participants were invited to respond with a poem or prose of no more than 300 words, or a small artwork that would fit into the dimensions a book.

Some works were created especially, while other images, texts and most particularly music performances, pre-existed and were submitted because they were considered pertinent.

The sum of the entire project is a beautifully presented statement of creative goodwill.

Curator: Suzanne Davies

Yulyurlu – Lorna Fencer Napurrurla

RMIT Gallery

28 June - 25 August 2012

Yulyurlu – Lorna Fencer Napurrurla is the first major survey exhibition of desert artist Yulyurlu (c1924-2006) that traces her development as a highly original artist during her twenty years of practice.

This exhibition highlights her importance within the Lajamanu region and positions Yulyurlu within the broader framework of the central desert art movement.

The Warlpiri artists have been involved in painting since the 1970s and are the most dominant desert group in terms of geographic spread. Their involvement in the Lajamanu painting movement is an important and distinctive chapter in the broader Warlpiri western desert art movement.

Yulyurlu was arguably the best known Warlpiri artist from the Katherine/Lajamanu region in the Top End of the Northern Territory. Even so, her pioneering role within the Warlpiri art tradition has never been fully appreciated.

Her authority over ceremonial imagery gave her the confidence to be experimental. Her geographic mobility and independence also exposed her to a range of different marketing opportunities and this was no doubt influential in encouraging her individual expression.

After moving to Katherine in the late 1990s Yulyurlu was a major force in the revival of Mimi Aboriginal Arts and Crafts and remained as it’s most committed and high profile artist until her death in 2006.

Yulyurlu is often likened to the famous Emily Kngwarreye because of her gestural and spontaneous reworking of the central desert idiom, even though it is doubtful that these women from different regions in the Territory were even aware of each other’s work.

Both were senior law women whose strength of character is reflected in highly personal styles that departed radically from the classic iconography of desert art. When Yulyurlu started painting in 1986 her work tended to bright colours and an asymmetry that became more pronounced in her more mature paintings. Her designs became looser using broad gestrual brush strokes and a rich over layering of paint. The energy and vibrancy of her work created considerable interest in the market place and this has been sustained since her death.

During her lifetime Yulyurlu achieved considerable national acclaim. A prolific artist, she has been represented in many solo and group selling exhibitions as well as in three major exhibitions curated by The Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Unsafe Haven: Hazaras in Afghanistan

RMIT Gallery

11 April - 8 June 2012

The photographs of an artist and former Afghan refugee Abdul Karim Hekmat make a powerful point about Australia’s asylum seeker policy.

Abdul Karim Hekmat came to Australia from Afghanistan as a refugee in 2001. Unsafe Haven documents his return in 2010 and what he discovered about the daily life and continuing persecution of the Hazara people.

Unsafe Haven is powerful and timely given the current deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan, and invites us to ask why the Government insists Afghans should be forced to return.

Since January 2011, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed between the Australian Government, the Government of Afghanistan and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, permits the involuntary repatriation from Australia of unsuccessful Afghan asylum-seekers back to Afghanistan. The agreement includes provision for sending back children: unaccompanied minors and other Afghan children who have become separated from their families.

The status of the Hazaras in particular, who are vulnerable because of their ethnicity and religious belief, has become ever more perilous in the past few months as it is intertwined with the general security situation in Afghanistan.

The images of Unsafe Haven highlight the physical drama of the landscape matched by the resilience and dignity of the people of Afghanistan. Art can eloquently communicate the power of the human spirit and it is the art gallery that provides us a safe space to explore difficult aspects of politics and social justice.

Put together with the UTS Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre (CSS), Amnesty international and the Australian Refugee Council, the exhibition is intended to give insight into the plight of the Hazara and to challenge the view that Afghan asylum seekers are no longer in need of protection.

Curator: Abdul Karim Hekmat

Only From The Heart Can You Touch The Sky

RMIT Gallery

10 April - 8 June 2012

This exhibition features paintings by Hazara artists Khadim Ali (Australia-Afghanistan) and Ali Baba Awrang (Afghanistan), calligraphy by Iranian poet and playwright Mammad Aidani, and Persian rugs.

Drawing its title from a from a poem by Movlana Jalal al-Din Rumi, the celebrated 13th-century Persian mystic poet, Only From The Heart Can You Touch The Sky focuses on the fusion of art and poetry.

In conceiving Only From The Heart Can You Touch The Sky, there was an understanding that everything was to be considered from the point of view of the heart, and that text and poetry were integral to the artwork.

As an art form that allows for the expression of existential and spiritual devotion to friendship, belonging, sharing, learning and exchange, calligraphy is the most commonly-practised of the visual arts in Afghanistan, and Kabul based Ali Baba Awrang has been creating calligraphic art for 20 years.

Sydney based Khadim Ali, a Hazara, originally from Afghanistan and whose works have been exhibited internationally, trained in miniature painting at the National College of Arts, Lahore, and draws on imagery from sources including the Bamiyan Buddhas.

Mammad Aidiani (Melbourne) has researched and published on Iranian diaspora, belonging, identity, and migration, and will respond to the artworks using freeform poetry in Persian script.

As there is an intrinsic connection between the poetic, calligraphy and carpet weaving, there are distinctive Persian carpets from private collections that will lend themselves to discussion about links with poetic and philosophical ideas.

We invite audiences to appreciate the elegant beauty of cultures which we usually see from the perspective of conflict, and to reflect on the fact so many people who come to Australia as refugees – sometimes as ‘boat people’ – are the inheritors of this poetic living culture.

Hannah Pang: Double Happiness Portrait of a Chinese Wedding

RMIT Gallery

17 February - 24 March 2012

Fascinated by traditional Chinese embroidery and silk weaving, Hannah Pang started working in Suzhou, China, in 2001, specialising in the development and the production of fashion fabrics.

Pang made a name for herself as a leather and suede designer in Hong Kong in the 1980s. Her dynamic reinterpretation of materials attracted some of the world’s leading fashion designers such as Issey Miyake and Gianni Versace.

She focused on Chinese handicrafts like embroidery, hand painting and hand weaving. She has worked with Australian labels including Akira and Willow.

Pang currently divides her time between Shanghai, Hong Kong and Australia.

Her latest collection to be exhibited at RMIT Gallery is a contemporary interpretation of a 1930s and 40s Chinese Wedding in Shanghai and the surrounding region. The collection is a blend of traditional Chinese styles and Western influences.

Most of the fabrics for this collection have been specially developed using a combination of techniques including gradation hand-painting, tie dyeing, weaving and embroidery.

Pang enjoys exploring and pushing the boundaries of traditional handicrafts.

Pang applies different handicraft techniques on each piece. Most pieces start from a simple base fabric, hand painted in gradation colours. Then pleating, cut and fold motifs and embroidery are added. The cut and fold embroidery on different widths of pleating creates interesting looks.

There are hand woven pieces using different widths of silk ribbons. Some are space-dyed and some were Gold-edged by hand. On the hand woven bases Pang has also tested making 3-dimensional motifs.

This exhibition is supported by Jin Ze Art Centre, Shanghai.

Joyaviva: Live Jewellery from across the Pacific

RMIT Gallery

10 February - 24 March 2012

Joyaviva recaptures the magic as artists from around the Pacific present beautiful objects that recover the power of jewellery and its role in helping people navigate through their lives. Many of the artists came from areas affected by recent earthquakes in Chile and New Zealand.

Using innovative concepts, jewellers from Australia, New Zealand and Chile have designed charms that respond to our hopes and fears, ranging from the threat of earthquakes to a child’s school exam.

As a space where contemporary jewellery becomes a form of social design, the exhibition also welcomes visitors to contribute stories from their own experiences.

Joyaviva is supported by the Council on Australia Latin America Relations (COALAR), Arts Victoria and Creative New Zealand.

1st Tamworth Textile Triennial Sensorial Loop

RMIT Gallery

9 February - 21 March 2012

Specific textile skills covered in this exhibition range from resist printed textiles to hand embroidered cross-stitch, from metal wire knitted on a machine to cloth woven on a jacquard loom.

A Victorian style mourning dress stained with a fugitive dye; pictures made of buttons detailing a migrant experience; hand printed resist style patterned cloth and machine knitted metal sculptural forms. These are some of the textile works to be shown at the 1st Tamworth Textile Triennial exhibition titled Sensorial Loop.

Demonstrating a legacy for sustaining a cultural heritage associated with textile practice for more than 30 years, the 1st Tamworth Textile Triennial features 22 creative textile artists represent a cross section of demographics from many states and one territory in Australia.

This exhibition showcases the changing ideas and professional craftsmanship associated with contemporary textile practice in Australia. The use of traditional and machine technologies, the collaboration and inter-disciplinary profiles of practitioners, the trend of slow making and sustainable practice is challenging the perception of the discipline of textiles. There is blurring within the definition of creative practice and Sensorial Loop aims to capture that shift in this exhibition.

Curator: Patrick Snelling

Artists:

Alana Clifton-Cunningham, Anton Veenstra, Belinda Von Mengersen, Brook Morgan, Carly Scoufos C, Cecilia Heffer, Cresside Collette, Demelza Sherwood, Elisa Markes-Young, Esther Paleologos, Jennifer Robertson, Julie Montgarrett, Lucy Irvine, Martha McDonald, Meredith Hughes, Michele Elliot, Michelle Hamer, Paula Do Prado, Rodney Love, Sera Waters, Tania Spencer, Verity Prideaux