2013

Chicks on Speed: SCREAM

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

12 December 2013 - 7 March 2014

RMIT Design Hub Gallery was pleased to announce a major exhibition by Australian/European artists Chicks on Speed (Alex Murray-Leslie and Melissa Logan). SCREAM introduced a multidisciplinary, practice based approach to performance research, blurring the boundaries between pop-music, fashion, performance and film within an experiential interactive installation or GESAMTKUNSTWERK (a total work of art). SCREAM saw the Design Hub Gallery dramatically transformed by Chicks on Speed’s explosive collage of images, sounds and objects. The artists constructed a sonic sculptural installation that also acted as an ‘objektinstrument’ (a self-made musical instrument) - a stage, a canvas and playable installation.  SCREAM questioned the role of the audience, by empowering the public with tools to participate in Chicks on Speed's collective jam session. SCREAM's interactive nature gave rise to several possible outcomes for the artworks, allowing the audience to be 'co-authors' in the mix (Candy, 2011).

SCREAM introduced a series of six interactive iPad Apps as new instruments for musical expression invented by Melissa Logan & Alex Murray-Leslie in conjunction with ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, technologist Jens Barth, with support by Melbourne based sound designer Benjamin Walbrook. The Chicks on Speed fashion film vs music video UTOPIA made at Artspace and MCA, Sydney, was presented in the Design Archive window for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The video featured Melbourne based dance troupe The Lycra Ladies and Billy Lime. A series of collateral events accompanied the exhibition, including a  workshop, Live Art Performance with collaborators including Erica Lewis, Lycra Ladies, Billy Lime and RMIT students, and the premiere of Chicks on Speed's remake of the Luis Buñuel Film, L'Age D'or.

Collaborating for over fifteen years, Chicks on Speed have worked with performers, artists and musicians including Yoko Ono, Peaches, Karl Lagerfeld and Douglas Gordon (among many others).  Chicks on Speed have performed at major festivals around the world, released numerous pop albums including celebrated tracks such as ‘GLAMOUR GIRL’, ‘We Don’t Play Guitars’ and ‘Art Dump’ and exhibited and performed globally at key cultural institutions. Chicks on Speed opened the 2013 Australian Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, the group has participated in major solo and group exhibitions at Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary 21, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Tate Modern, London and MoMA, New York. SCREAM was a joint project between ZKM, Artspace and RMIT Design Hub Gallery. The group released the six iPad Apps and full length album SCREAM to coincide with the exhibition, released on Chicks on Speed records and digitally in March, 2014.

Bearing the sharp weapons of Pop, subversion and cheekiness Melissa Logan & Alex Murray-Leslie declare war on gatekeepers of a market-enslaved art. And thank the generosity of the individuals and institutes who have made SCREAM possible. The funding of culture is too often seen as a luxury when culture is what allows dreams.  Imagination is a matter of development and everything made has been imagined first.

SCREAM is a joint project between Artspace and RMIT Design Hub Gallery. 

Curators: Suzanne Davies, Dr Kipps Horn & Michael Gudinski

Music, Melbourne and Me: 40 years of Mushroom and Melbourne’s Popular Music Culture

RMIT Gallery

19 November 2013 - 22 February 2014

Music, Melbourne and Me: 40 years of Mushroom and Melbourne’s Popular Music Culture is a celebration of the last four decades of popular music represented through music, songs, posters, photographs, costumes, memorabilia and iconic rock venues.

Both visually and aurally rich, the major exhibition encapsulates the story behind the growth of the city’s music industry. It explores the success of Melbourne recording artists both nationally and internationally and highlights in particular the commencement and success of Australia’s biggest independent record label, Melbourne’s own Mushroom Records, founded by Michael Gudinski in 1972.

The free exhibition features many items from the Mushroom Groups extensive memorabilia collection, plus items never before seen in public exhibition from the personal collections of Michael Gudinski, Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum, Kylie Minogue, Skyhooks, Split Enz and Crowded House.

The exhibition developed from research by RMIT’s School of Media and Communication into aspects of celebrity, nostalgia and popular music culture.

“Melbourne is Australia’s home of live music and over the past 40 years, live music venues, fashion and all other aspects of fandom and celebrity have become integral to the lives of many Melburnians – something this exhibition will celebrate,” said RMIT Gallery Director Suzanne Davies.

Ms Davies said the extensive free public programs associated with the exhibition would enhance audience’s experience and understanding of the many aspects to popular music culture.

Mr Gudinski said he was thrilled to be working together with RMIT Gallery to co-present Music, Melbourne & Me: 40 years of Mushroom and Melbourne’s Popular Music Culture.

“I’m very proud of the many achievements and huge success of the Mushroom Group artists and companies. I’m equally as excited that so many Melbourne artists have also achieved success both nationally and internationally, many of whom you will see represented in this exhibition at RMIT Gallery,” he said.

“Melbourne is certainly one of the greatest cities in the world to enjoy music and this exhibition is a great way to celebrate the past and preview the future.”

Curators: Suzanne Davies, RMIT Gallery Director and Chief Curator, Dr Kipps Horn, Program Director of RMIT’s Bachelor of Arts (Music Industry); with curatorial input from Michael Gudinski AM, CEO of the Mushroom Group of Companies.

The Door In The Dark

RMIT Gallery

4 - 19 September 2013

The Door In The Dark: Selected Works From The Cunningham Dax Collection.

We all have an inner life, a quiet and evocative space where we visualise our dreams and concerns.

This exhibition explores the way in which art has provided the artists a means by which they can explore their interior worlds, and changing mental states, as well as a means by which to find a release from that interior. These artworks give viewers an insight into the minds of the artists and in so doing promote empathy and understanding.

These art works have been produced in many different contexts, from institutional settings to the private homes of artists, and encompass a range of psychological experiences, including solitude, calmness, joy and contemplation, as well as turmoil and suffering. These experiences are common to all of us in varying degrees.

The Door in the Dark features highlights from the Cunningham Dax Collection. The works have been made in various contexts; from the Collection’s earliest artworks made in Victoria’s psychiatric hospitals between the 1950s and the 1980s, through to its most recent acquisitions, made by professional artists in their studios.

The Dax Centre

The Dax Centre is a multifaceted not-for-profit organisation that explores the fascinating interface between art and the mind. The Dax Centre’s mission is to promote mental health and wellbeing by fostering a greater understanding of the mind, mental illness and trauma through art and creativity.

The Dax Centre, located in the Kenneth Myer Building on the University of Melbourne campus off Royal Parade, Melbourne, houses the Cunningham Dax Collection, which comprises 15,000 artworks by people with experience of mental illness or trauma. The collection is one of the three largest of its kind in the world.

Sound Bites City

RMIT Gallery

3 September - 19 October

The inaugural exhibition of RMIT University’s new Sound Art Collection.

Sound Bites City will showcase the new  RMIT University Sound Art Collection – the first of its kind in Australia – and offer audiences the chance to experience 19 new and significant works by leading Australian and international sound artists.

The exhibition takes place in the Torus – an exciting circular structure that has been specially designed by architects, engineers and sound designers based in RMIT’s SIAL unit to provide the best way to exhibit sound.

The Torus will take up the entire main gallery, with overlapping ‘boughs’ of red cedar forming a canopy around a thin fabric skin – it will be an airy shell, a sonic tunnel, a pioneering spacio-acoustic marvel constructed by RMIT architecture and design students.

The immersive sounds experienced inside the Torus will introduce audiences to works especially commissioned by, or acquired from, artists from Australia, Canada, UK, Germany, US, and France.

Visitors are invited to stroll through a 16 channel speaker system, finishing on a raised mini landscape where they can relax on the faux lawn while enjoying the best aural vantage point to hear the works.

Audiences will also have the opportunity to browse through any part of the Collection on headphones, and to watch the composition of a work in progress.

A unique addition to Australian culture, this is the first dedicated sound art collection in an Australian university. For over two years RMIT Gallery has worked closely with sound and design researchers at the University to select the inaugural works and develop an exhibition platform for spatial electroacoustic sound works.

The Collection includes 2010 Turner Prize winner Susan Philipsz’s We’ll All Go Together, leading Australian sound artists Sonia Leber and David Chesworth’s Sydney Olympic Park Commission 5000 Calls, and the pioneering Bill Fontana’s Kirribilli Wharf.

There will also be scheduled performances of work by Steve Stelios Adam, Philip Brophy, Christophe Charles, Bill Fontana, Katrin Isabel Ernst, Susan Frykberg, Christine Groult, Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, Nick Murray and Carl Anderson, Susan Philipsz, Douglas Quin, Stephan Schütze, Daniel Teruggi, Horacio Vaggione, Chris Watson and Christian Zanési, as well as a chance to glimpse a work in progress by Richard Barrett and Daryl Buckley.

The works exist across a wide sonic palette, encompassing vocalisations of everyday life; animal calls and soundscapes from the natural environment; sounds from the island of Madeira and the coast of West Africa; the human voice strained to breaking, the making and drinking of coffee; the lapping of water in Sydney Harbour.

For this exhibition the pieces will be continuously scheduled in the Gallery, while the Collection will eventually be heard on a new soundscape system planned for RMIT’s city campus.

The exhibition is being co-curated by Associate Professor Lawrence Harvey, Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) Sound Studios, School of Architecture and Design, Suzanne Davies, RMIT Gallery Director and Chair of the RMIT Collection Advisory Committee; and Jon Buckingham, Collections Coordinator, RMIT Gallery. Gallery.

Artists:

Steve Stelios Adam, Richard Barrett and Daryl Buckley, Philip Brophy, Christophe Charles, Katrin Isabel Ernst, Bill Fontana, Susan Frykberg, Christine Groult, Sonia Leber and David Chesworth, Nick Murray and Carl Anderson, Susan Philipsz, Douglas Quin, Stephan Schütze, Daniel Teruggi, Horacio Vaggione, Chris Watson and Christian Zanési.

A Parliament Of Lines

RMIT Gallery

27 June - 17 August 2013

In the 21st century, drawing has a renewed importance in the art world and A Parliament Of Lines: Contemporary Scottish Drawing aims to explore how drawing is being used in contemporary art practice.

In continuing the dialogue that RMIT Gallery has engaged with about the role of drawing in contemporary art practice, the drawing exhibition A Parliament of Lines questions what constitutes a drawing, exploring its boundary with painting, animation and photography.

RMIT Gallery Director Suzanne Davies said artists and students would be able to examine how drawing is being used globally in contemporary art practice.

“This is part of an ongoing dialogue in our exhibitions at RMIT Gallery, where we reveal how artists and architects have a very strong notion that drawing is integral to their thinking, creative practice, providing evidence of lingering materiality,” Ms Davies said.

“With drawing, we can see both the finished product and the ideas, but most importantly, we can see the haptic experience of making lines on paper and always, we see it is the thinking hand that remains dominant.”

According to Euan Gray, the curator of A Parliament Of Lines, drawing has remained at the heart of Scottish art education since the Edinburgh College of Art was formed initially as the first drawing school in Britain, over 250 years ago.

He said that the exhibition collectively highlights the creative richness and diversity of the work of artists who are either Scottish or who have passed through the Scottish education system.

The exhibition will focus on five themes, juxtaposing various artists’ work; body/likeness; architecture/Landscape; geometric abstraction; reproduction/film/photography and sculptural investigation

“Drawing is a place where artists deliberate. More than any other medium, drawing reveals artist’s intimate thoughts and workings,” Mr Gray said.

“A drawing can be a number of things. It can be a sketch at the primary stage of artistic invention, or the main vehicle of expression, an end in itself. With a material presence and labour intensive realisation, many drawings today are a reaction against the fleeting experience of images prevalent in our media saturated existence.”

Curator: Euan Gray

Artists:

Charles Avery, Paul Chiappe, Layla Curtis, Nathalie De Briey, Moyna Flannigan, Luca Frei, Euan Gray, Sam Griffin, Marie Harnett, Callum Innes, Alan Johnston, Andrew MacKenzie, David Shrigley, Graeme Todd and Ainslie Yule.

A Head In A Hive of Bees

RMIT Gallery

27 June - 17 August 2013

A Head in A Hive of Bees showcases the artist’s idiosyncratic, surreal imagery and focuses on drawing as the core activity in his work.

This exhibition includes the recent series of large multi-paneled works on Japanese shikishi boards along side selected drawings spanning Ellis’s career including rarely seen sketchbooks and artist’s books.

Ellis’s imagery has its origins in automatic drawing that is spontaneous and a reflection of the spirit. He conjures strange animals and insects, alien characters and abstracted forms divined from subconscious thoughts often without pre-conceived idea.

Drawn directly from the imagination, these works are often intimate in scale, calligraphic and articulate simultaneously. They indicate Ellis’s long-standing involvement with a Dada and Surrealist philosophy.

Conscious analysis and research inspired by these drawings create another layer of associated imagery from a wide variety of sources.

The works in the exhibition bristle with Chinese and Japanese landscape references and scientific apparatus perhaps evidence of an experiment where science goes wrong.

A sense of mystery and metamorphosis pervades a scene waiting to be revealed. A cause and affect principal is in place. Things are changing.

Everywhere there are fractures of imagery in scale, time and form, voids, dis- junctions and connections. Some images disappear only to emerge unexpectedly elsewhere. Ellis’s drawings buzz with activity, emotion and the transformative power of an inventive imagination.

A Room Without A View: Gosia Wlodarczak

RMIT Gallery

27 June - 17 August 2013

Artist Gosia Wlodarczak will be enclosed in a specially designed sensory limitation cube in RMIT Gallery, drawing without any exposure to the outside world.

Between 10.30 am and 5 pm daily – until 5 July – artist Gosia Wlodarczak will be enclosed in a specially designed sensory limitation cube in RMIT Gallery, drawing without any exposure to the outside world – literally ‘drawing’ what she can see in the space around her. Audiences can view the drawing in progress via the live web cam streaming onto a screen within the gallery. This unique creative situation is in contrast to the artist’s socially focused practice.

After 17 days, Gosia will stop drawing and emerge from the cube to talk about her experience. Audiences will then be able to enter the space to reflect on the work. The project uses the language of drawing to investigate what Gosia describes as “an ongoing search for the reassurance, for the ‘material proof’ of my existence.”

“This project will be an experiment where I deliberately deny myself the complex stimuli of my senses, especially sense of sight,” Gosia said.

“By performing/creating my work while enclosed inside a small empty cube with black walls, ceiling and floor, I recall the experience of a person in solitary confinement, unable to experience the change, exchange and complexity of the world outside, or an embryo in the womb experiencing the womb as the whole universe.”

Gosia always draws her environment as she sees it, in real time – tracing and re-tracing the visible. The intention with A Room Without a View, as with her other projects, is for Gosia to record the present time in a continuous moment, to archive her space-time, all bits of present and her mind’s realization of now. She will try to translate her living energy into the drawn line.

“Isolation can distort my everyday perception of time-space which I see as always crossed/overlapped with time-spaces of others. During my short isolation I am going to probe and examine the effects of loneliness within the drawing and the possible mutation of conversation with my inner-self,” Gosia says.

“My aim is to create a new drawn reality, as tangible as the line structure can be. Gradually, as it organically expands across the wall of the room, I will live inside the drawing.”

Convergence: Transforming Our Future, Design Research Institute

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

2 - 23 May 2013

Convergence was a celebratory exhibition showcasing five years of world–class excellence within the Design Research at RMIT.

Encompassing three major ‘Flagship’ practice groups – Future Fabric of Cities, Nexus and Mediated Cities – the exhibition collected and reflected upon past, present and future projects that offered a cutting-edge leadership position on global design research.

Activating three full floors of the Design Hub (and throughout the building at key program times), the exhibition included installations and live events including a specifically designed ‘theatre in the round’ for interactive events, live construction of a large-scale flexible structure ‘Dermoid’, a design ‘reading’ room, workshops, seminars and performance, – all contained within a bespoke exhibition environment.

Curated by: Fleur Watson, RMIT Design Hub Gallery

Program curated by: Ewan McEoin, Studio Propeller

Exhibition design by: Muir Mendes

Exhibition graphics by: Chase and Galley

Peter Corrigan: Cities of Hope

RMIT Gallery

12 April - 8 June 2013

Peter Corrigan: Cities of Hope traces the creative focus of this remarkable Australian architect, bringing to life many of his designs over four decades.

Architect, set and costume designer Peter Corrigan is well known for designing RMIT’s Building 8 – a campus landmark and city icon. Regarded as one of the most outstanding postmodern buildings in Melbourne today, Building 8 combines the bold vision and whimsical style that is Corrigan’s trademark.

Dr Peter Corrigan is an RMIT Architecture Professor and RAIA Gold Medal winning architect. His architectural practice Edmond and Corrigan with Maggie Edmond is widely published and awarded with notable projects that include the Athan House and RMIT Building 8, which won the RAIA Walter Burley Griffin National Award for Urban Design, 1995.

The architect has also brought his vision to the set and costume designs for many prestigious productions of ballet, drama and opera including The Grand Macabre for Barrie Kosky at the Komische Oper House Berlin in 2005 and the upcoming opera Falstaff directed by Tama Matheson, to be staged at Oper Graz, Austria in January 2013.

Peter Corrigan: Cities of Hope traces the creative focus of this remarkable Australian architect, bringing to life many of his designs over four decades including architectural models and drawings by Edmond and Corrigan; set and costume designs for theatre; artworks, records and notations from his personal collection and key works selected from public collections which have enriched his practice.

The exhibition will also feature a selection from Corrigan’s vast personal library of over 3000 books; among them key architectural works such as J Leeke’s 1669 Vignola, early editions of Palladio, and major collections on Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe.

Exhibition curator Vanessa Gerrans said that “this portrait exhibition offers a flavour and an insight into Peter’s life and design method. It showcases the cultural dimension of architecture and design by revealing the diversity of sources upon which creative practitioners like Peter Corrigan draw. These works capture the colour, spirit and expression of Corrigan’s inquiries, complementing his commitment to architecture, cultural history and ideas.”

The exhibition will appeal to audiences interested not just in architecture, but also those engaged in theatre, costume design, visual art and history. Ms Gerrans said.

A graduate of Yale University in the USA, where he completed a Master Degree in Environmental Design, Corrigan was a champion of the Melbourne suburbs, finding “fabulous energy” in the often derided vernacular.

The phrase “cities of hope” was coined by Corrigan to express his feeling that “architecture should enhance that sense of a defining difference which is central to what makes a culture rich and its citizens proud.”

“Peter has a reputation for being a maverick designer who takes risks, yet he is also a culture hero whose colourful, contrary nature reminds us that nothing should remain static,” Ms Gerrans said.

“Combined with his rich imagination and critical engagement in architecture, ideas and education, Peter’s work offers an expression of renewal and hope for the future.”

Curator: Vanessa Gerrans

Archizines

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

31 January - 26 March 2013

Archizines celebrated the resurgence of alternative and independent architectural publishing around the world. The touring exhibition, curated by Elias Redstone and initiated in collaboration with the architectural association, featured 90 architecture magazines, fanzines and journals from over twenty countries that provided an alternative to the established architectural press. Edited by architects, artists and students, these publications provided new platforms for commentary, criticism and research into the spaces we inhabit and the practice of architecture. They make an important and often radical addition to architectural discourse and demonstrate a residual love for print matter in the digital age.

The exhibition featured titles from the collection alongside video interviews with their creators. Each publication had selected one issue to represent their approach to publishing and they were all available for visitors to read. The Melbourne version of Archizines was the biggest yet, including new and more recent publication additions such as POST from Melbourne, FAKE CITIES / TRUE STORIES from Bratislava, Proposals from Helsinki, and the archive of Intuitive Structures from Berlin. The original Archizines collection was transferred to the National art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Public offer: Ways to share design

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

31 January - 26 March 2013

The celebration and interrogation of design publishing was the inaugural exhibition at RMIT Design Hub Gallery.

Designers have produced a phalanx of publications since the mid-twentieth century in the city of Melbourne. Public Offer aggregated these discussion platforms — zines, journals, blogs, apps, informal exchange circles, radio shows and podcasts — to look at how publishing has shaped conversations about the city and its design culture. Through this presentation (of fashion, architecture, industrial design, landscape architecture and graphic design), Public Offer prompted the questions: What do designers have to say? What can designers offer by being public?

The assembled material in Public Offer was unpacked through several voices — makers, publishers, critics, writers and readers — that became an additional guide. These personal narratives were accompanied by a program of public activities including sports, evening drinks, roundtables, coffee breaks, workshops, beamer presentations and talks that provided the social space that is vital for an exchange of ideas.

In considering both the past and the present field of design publishing, Public Offer and its host RMIT Design Hub Gallery sought to be part of a generous, critical community for design by creating a site for conversation, archiving and self-publishing. By exhibiting these publishing platforms, it shared some of the tools and topics designers use to engage with the public today, and its implications. By making a public offer, we declare our values as designers.

Public Offer was a program of activities, an exhibition, a library and a partner to the touring exhibition Archizines, curated by Elias Redstone, while in Melbourne at RMIT Design Hub.