2014

De Anima – Brook Andrew

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

11 December 2014 - 13 February 2015

This exhibition was an outcome of an experimental process between Brook Andrew and RMIT Design Hub Gallery to develop a new body of work – Horizon I, II, III and IV – specifically for the Design Hub Gallery. The two-channel version of the video De Anima, originally produced for The Cinemas Project, included a new third video channel. The experience is one of a merging of fiction and truth, challenging and blurring the space between sculpture, video and performance. This exhibition also included live performances by Justin Shoulder and Mama Alto who appear in the De Anima video.

Andrew is a conjurer of processes and has spent his career researching, collaborating and divining architecture, photography and museological archives to create immersive experiences.

Horizon I, II and III was an installation of found films and a ‘living archive’ that appeared in a state of transition: set-like and yet ready for activation. The exhibition also included Horizon IV, a collaboration with RMIT’s School of Fashion and Textiles to produce a set of veils that could be worn by exhibition visitors.

De Anima embodied the concept of reflective design research – of revealing the social and cultural experiences that influence one’s practice. Like many of the designers who research from and exhibit within Design Hub Gallery, Andrew’s creative practice is transformed and characterised by its ongoing self-reflection.

RMIT Design Hub Gallery Curators: Kate Rhodes, Fleur Watson

The Cinemas Project Curator: Bridget Crone

Part of Experimenta Recharge: 6th International Biennial of Media Art

A NETS Victoria exhibition curated by: Bridget Crone for The Cinemas Project

CATALYST: Katherine Hannay Visual Arts Commission

Experimenta International Biennial of Media Arts

RMIT Gallery

29 November 2014 - 21 February 2015

Experimenta is Australia’s leading media arts organisation, dedicated to commissioning, exhibiting and touring the world’s best contemporary media art.

RMIT Gallery is delighted to partner with Experimenta in presenting the 6^th International Biennial of Media Arts. This marks the second occasion in which RMIT Gallery has partnered with Experimenta, Australia’s leading media arts organization dedicated to commissioning, exhibiting and touring some of the world’s most compelling contemporary media art. Experimenta’s vision is auspiciously aligned with the trans-disciplinary focus of RMIT Gallery within RMIT University, with its global orientation and overarching commitment to design and innovation across all teaching and research disciplines.

Entitled Recharge, this 6^th Experimenta provides a perfect opportunity to draw on resources and capacities across RMIT University including RMIT’s International Artist in Residence Program, SIAL, Design Hub and the professional resources and exhibition capacity of RMIT Gallery as principal venue and sponsor partner. RMIT Gallery’s distinctive approach to research within the university is to identify outcomes that can then be transformed into artworks or manifestations appropriate to exhibition in a public art gallery.

This was highlighted in the impromptu performance at RMIT A’Beckett Urban Square following the official exhibition opening, where Melbourne dance artists Brooke Stamp, Deanne Butterworth, Shian Law, Ellen Davies, Lilian Steiner and Tim Walsh joined Abel Korinsky to transform the blue sports court into an outdoor stage. The performance, which was formed from common interests in the Big Bang, soundart and dance, played to a large audience and artfully demonstrated the ways in which RMIT Gallery’s exhibition programme opens up new speculative ways of thinking and understanding through the visceral experience of art.

Curator: Jonathan Parsons

Warlayirti: The Art of Balgo

RMIT Gallery

15 September - 8 November 2014

Warlayirti examines the aesthetic divergences and vibrancy that distinguishes the art of Balgo and the importance of Christianity to the Balgo community as a means of cross cultural communication.

Balgo (Wirrimanu), Western Australia, in the midst of the Tanami desert is the ceremonial hub for several Indigenous clans from the Kimberley and Western Desert and is on the Luurnpa (kingfisher) Dreaming track.

Many of Australia’s most recognised Australian artists come from this region including Murityarru Sunfly Tjampitjin, Wimmitji Tjampitjin, Boxer Milner, Eubena Nampitjin, Elizabeth Nyumi, Lucy Yukenbarri and John Mosquito Tjapangati.

This exhibition brings together the church banners, as well as early and more recent work by the leading and emerging artists from Warlayirti Artists, one of the most successful art centres to emerge from remote area Australia .

The art movement began with the painting of church banners in 1981 for Father Peile’s jubilee lead by the senior men. A watershed exhibition, Art from the Great Sandy Desert was held in 1986 at the Art Gallery of WA resulting in the art from Balgo being recognised as a distinct body of work distinguished by diversity of style and bold use of colour.

A pivotal work in the exhibition is a painting by Sunfly Tjampitjin of the first priest appearing in the desert. Sunfly, a senior lawman and community leader, was instrumental in persuading the various groups in the Tamami desert to go and live at the mission when it was established at Balgo. The mission was a chance to buffer the aggressive practices of pastoralists in the area, becoming a refuge for people from the onslaught of white settlement.

The curator, Jacqueline Healy has been visiting Warlayirti Artists annually for over a decade and has worked closely with the committee arts advisors and individual artists in devising this proposal. Key individuals who participated in the 1986 exhibition have been interviewed including; Gracie Green, Bruce Njamme, Gary Njamme and Eubena Nampitjin. Important primary research material has been located in the Warlayirti Artists archives including the original documentation for the artworks in the 1986 exhibtion.

Warlayirti: The Art of Balgo has been developed in collaboration with Warlayirti Artists Committee and the exhibition will be accompanied by a major catalogue incorporating new research material.

Garnkiny: Constellations of Meaning

RMIT Gallery

15 September - 8 November 2014

This exhibition includes works by Gija artists, both past and present, which explore aspects of the rich and significant story Garnkiny Ngarranggarni (Moon Dreaming).

This exhibition will include works by Gija artists, both past and present, which explore aspects of the rich and significant story Garnkiny Ngarranggarni (Moon Dreaming) which takes place on Yarin Country in Darrajayin, between Warmun and Halls Creek, in Western Australia. The telling, retelling and learning of these stories are powerful ways for this vast practical, intellectual and cultural legacy to be reproduced, passed on and reshaped.

“Well this was the dream by Wardel and Garnkiny (Star and Moon). That’s what my mother and dad told me about that Dream. The moon sits in the east. The star sits on top of the hills, the moon came and climbed that hill. That moon loved his mother-in-law, but they told him he couldn’t love her and to go away. He left with shame and climbed up the hill and he was looking from on top [of the hill]. He told all the people that they were going to die. He said that he would be the only one living. He cursed those people that he would be the only one coming back alive. He told them, while they were sitting down, ’you are all going to die and I will be still alive, coming out. Every three days I will rise from the dead.’ They all died and he was the only one that stayed alive. He came back as the moon, for three days every month.“

– Mabel Juli

Ngarranggarni stories like this one embody webs of interrelated meanings concerning practices, concepts and laws that continue to sustain and inspire stree.

Garnkiny Ngarranggarni speaks of some of the most basic human experiences – death and mortality, sex and desire, love and obligation. Importantly it concerns the laws of Gija kinship that set down who could rightly love whom and relates human beings with every other living thing.

Bloom: Alisa Andrasek

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

27 August - 10 October 2014

Internationally renowned architect Alisa Andrasek was a special guest of RMIT Design Hub Gallery, in partnership with RMIT School of Architecture and Design. Andrasek’s interactive installation Bloom was on show in conjunction with The Future is Here, an exhibition touring from the London Design Museum.

The urban toy, distributed social game and collective ‘gardening’ experience was first installed in London, as part of the capital’s city-wide celebration during the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Bloom sought the engagement of people to construct its organic, blooming formations - so come to Design Hub Gallery and play!

Bloom is designed and developed by Alisa Andrasek and Jose Sanchez from The Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL.

Design Museum Curator: Alex Newson.

RMIT Design Hub Gallery Curators: Kate Rhodes, Fleur Watson.

Exhibition Design: Studio Roland Snooks.

Exhibition Graphics: Stuart Geddes and Brad Haylock.

The Future Is Here

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

27 August - 10 October 2014

We are in the midst of a transformation in the way we design, make and consume the objects that we depend upon. New techniques, technologies and relationships mean that the boundaries between designer, manufacturer and user are becoming increasingly blurred. Greater access to information about how objects are made, as well as access to those who traditionally make them, is revolutionising the role of the consumer so that more people than ever before are taking part in the production of our physical world. The Future is Here asked what this means for all of us.

Mass customisation, emerging technologies and platforms such as crowd funding, social networking, online marketplaces, robotic manufacturing processes, 3D printing, nanotechnology, routing and open-source micro computing, are all removing the barriers of access to manufacturing.

The Future is Here was a touring exhibition created by the Design Museum, London. When on show at RMIT Design Hub Gallery, the exhibition included additional local design research projects that demonstrated the importance of speculation and prototyping to innovation and design. Alisa Andrasek was a special guest, in partnership with RMIT School of Architecture and Design. Her project, Bloom was exhibited in conjunction with The Future is Here in Project Room 3. The urban toy, distributed social game and collective ‘gardening’ experience was first installed in London, as part of the capital’s city-wide celebration during the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Bloom is designed and developed by Alisa Andrasek and Jose Sanchez from The Barlett School of Architecture at UCL.

Design Museum Curator: Alex Newson.

RMIT Design Hub Curators: Kate Rhodes, Fleur Watson.

Exhibition Design: Studio Roland Snooks.

Exhibition Graphics: Stuart Geddes and Brad Haylock.

The Ulm School of Design

RMIT Gallery

31 July - 30 August 2014

Discover the methodology and legacy of Germany’s influential Ulm School of Design, responsible for Lufthansa corporate branding and other iconic mid twentieth century designs.

From 1953 until it closed in 1968 the Ulm School of Design in Germany was one of the world’s most important contemporary design academies. Regarded as being second only to the Bauhaus, the Ulm School’s successful work for Braun’s audio equipment and German airline Lufthansa reflected a design concept based on science and technology. This is still revered internationally as the ‘Ulm Model’ and has helped define what it means to be a professional industrial designer.

Attracted by the interdisciplinary aspects of the training program, students from around the globe flocked to study with founders and teachers such as Otl Aicher, Tomás Maldonado, Max Bill, Inge Aicher-Scholl, Max Bense, Hans Gugelot, and Gui Bonsiepe.

It was Tomás Maldonado, a teacher and industrial designer, who shifted the focus at the Ulm School of Design away from its Bauhaus-based beginnings towards an approach that was felt to be appropriate to deal with the complexities of post-Second World War living.

This touring exhibition from Ulm Museum celebrates the founding of the legendary Ulm School of Design, and provides an insight into the iconic designs and the strict methodology imposed on project development that characterizes the ‘Ulm Method’.

The exhibition will showcase the Ulm School’s graphic work, photographs, architectural models, porcelain, tableware, lamps, furniture as well as videos from the Ulm School. This exhibition is curated by the Hochschule für Gestaltung Archive, a department of the Ulm Museum.

An exhibition by ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) German institute for international cultural relations.

This event is sponsored by the Goethe-Institut, Ulm Museum and the ifa.

Situation

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

22 July - 2 August 2014

Situation was an event – symposium, exhibition and a series of city occupations – initiated and arranged by the RMIT Interior Design program. Situation brings attention to the designing of interiors as a practice engaged in spatial and temporal production; a practice that works in the midst of social, cultural, historical and political forces; a practice open to contingency, chance and change; a practice engaged with singularity and specificity.

Situation highlighted ideas of ‘event’ and the eventful nature of interiors, lived space-time compositions in constant change; atmospheric compositions as distinct from artefacts; ephemerality; uniqueness; one-offs; a multiplicity of experience. The event aimed to contribute to the discipline of interior design at an international level by focusing on these key characteristics of practice, the kinds of research this produced and through this articulates, fosters and advocates opportunities for future practice. 

Partnered by IDEA (Interior Design/Interior Architecture Educators Association).

Revelations: Sculpture from the RMIT Art Collection

RMIT Gallery

22 May - 14 July 2014

For the first time, a selection of key sculptural works from the RMIT University Art Collection will be displayed at RMIT Gallery in a exhibition, that showcases important pieces from the past 50 year.

Revelations features Australian and international artists including Ah Xian, Lisa Roet, Clement Meadmore, Inge King and Bill Fontana, and will unveil new acquisitions and highlight major works from the long standing collection.

The RMIT Art Collection provides a considerable overview of Australian art history and includes some of the most highly regarded and successful artists that both the country and the University have produced. Its purpose is to tell the history of the University through the creative output of its staff and alumni, and to reflect RMIT’s core values of innovation, creativity, sustainability and social engagement.

The RMIT Art Collection was reinvigorated in 2010 when the Vice Chancellor and President Professor Margaret Gardner AO reformed the art committee and began a program of acquisition to bolster the current collection and highlight RMIT’s commitment to both Australia’s cultural history, and it’s future. RMIT is proud to have played host to some of the country’s most exciting contemporary sculptors, such as Lisa Roet and Reko Rennie.

RMIT Gallery Director and Chair of the Art Committee Suzanne Davies said that the impetus for this exhibition is to reveal RMIT’s history as one of the homes of high modernism in Australian sculpture.

“RMIT began teaching art in 1888 as the Working Men’s College and significant energy has been driven by the University’s strength of educative energy and vision of commitment to the arts,” Ms Davies said.

“This sculpture exhibition will reveal works that have been largely unseen for decades.”

Sound sculpture will also be highlighted, in recognition of the role RMIT has played in championing Australia’s first sound art collection and the strength of its research in spatial sound.

According to Ms Davies, the RMIT University Art Collection serves as an educational and research resource for the University and the community.

“A commitment to quality and innovation in art practice is a primary focus for the RMIT University Art Collection. These works aspire to reflect and elaborate on the creative strengths of RMIT and its amazing story.”

Curator: Jon Buckingham

Artists:

Bruce Armstrong, Peter Asel, Robert Baines, Percival Ball, Geoffrey Bartlett, Peter Blizzard, Robert Bridgewater, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Jock Clutterbuck, Augustine Dall’Ava, Bill Fontana, Rosalie Gascoigne, Don Gore, Victor Greenhalgh, Anton Hart, Vincas Jomantas, Inge King, Juz Kitson, Alexander Knox, Hilarie Mais, Baluka Maymuru, Galuma Maymuru, Clement Meadmore, Kevin Mortensen, Helen Mueller, Lenton Parr, Simon Perry, Anthony Pryor, Reko Rennie, Lisa Roet, Bruce Slatter, Zoja Trofimiuk, Jeffery Wilkinson, David Wilson, Dan Wollmering, Ah Xian, Liu Xiao Xian, Klaus Zimmer.

Architectural Urbanism: Seoul/Melbourne

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

13 - 23 May 2014

This project was the second stage of a cross-cultural, bilateral exhibition of award-winning architects from Seoul, South Korea and Melbourne, Australia. The first event took place at the Korean National University of Arts Gallery, Seoul, South Korea, 28 March – 6 April 2013.  The exhibition and symposium’s theme focused on architectural urbanism and the sustainable future of cities in the Asia-Pacific region. The commonalities and commitment to these issues and to urban design, which values cultural, climatic and environmental specificity, form a central theme and focus for discussion and dissemination. The intention was that these events seed an ongoing institutional exchange between RMIT and KNUA and between the participating and invited architectural professionals.

Korean architecture was presented in an ambitious light to audiences in Melbourne alongside their Australian counterparts, while the event promoted critical issues of sustainable urbanism in the Asia-Pacific region and fostered close relationships between the two cities.

Curators:
Prof Sand Helsel and Anna Johnson, RMIT
Prof Jongkyu Kim, K-Arts School of Visual Arts Dep of Architecture, Korea
Lee Sung Min, Independent Curator, Korea

Exhibitors from Korea:
Jongkyu Kim, M.A.R.U; Hyong Sil Min, H. Min Architect and Assoc; Kim Bong Ryol; Onijum, Haewon Shin, lokaldesign; JinWook Lee, JungHun Hwang, Lee and Hwang Architects; Choi Wook, Jinseok Choi, One O One Architects.

Exhibitors from Australia:
NMBW Architects; Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects; Muir Mendes Architects; Kerstin Thompson Architects; Baracco + Wright Architects.

Las Vegas Studio: IMAGES FROM THE ARCHIVES OF ROBERT VENTURI AND DENISE SCOTT BROWN

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

31  March - 2 May 2014

In 1968, architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour joined together with students from Yale University and took on Las Vegas as the subject of research. The group spent three weeks in libraries, four days in Los Angeles, and ten days in Las Vegas. The research led to the 1972 publication of the seminal architectural theory treatise, Learning from Las Vegas. Photography and film were employed equally as a means of argumentation and representation.

These original materials have since been stored in the archives of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia. The exhibition Las Vegas Studio: Images from the Archives of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown presented the images and films that were taken during the legendary 1968 Las Vegas research trip.

Within RMIT Design Hub Gallery this archival material was presented alongside a series of video interviews, objects and ephemera collected from leading Melbourne architects that traced the influence of Venturi and Scott Brown on the development of Melbourne’s architectural culture.

In addition to Las Vegas Studio, a partner exhibition was presented on Level 3 of RMIT Design Hub. John Gollings: Learning From Surfers Paradise (1973 – 2013) was a project inspired by Learning from Las Vegas.

John Gollings: Learning From Surfers Paradise

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

31  March - 2 May 2014

John Gollings: Learning From Surfers Paradise (1973 – 2013) was presented on Level 3 of RMIT Design Hub as the partner exhibition to Las Vegas Studio.

Inspired by Learning from Las Vegas, Gollings arrived in Surfers Paradise in 1973 from Melbourne (a well known summer holiday route) with the intention to extensively photograph the town’s architecture, signs and symbols of leisure. The field work for the study was conducted in collaboration with Melbourne architect Tony Styant-Browne, urban planner Mal Horner and graphic designer Julie Jame.

Gollings – a celebrated Melbourne-based architectural photographer – had returned to the exact sites as part of a complete re-photographic study of what he documented 40 years ago. John Gollings: Learning From Surfers Paradise was developed by Gold Coast City Gallery with Gollings studio.

All at Once, All of the Time

RMIT Design Hub Gallery

16 - 21 March 2014

A result of the curatorial intensive held at RMIT Design Hub Gallery, the exhibition All at Once, All of the Time was a group exhibition informed by current research at the intersection of art, technology and visual identity.

In an immaterial, post-internet, global hyper-networked environment that is driven by mass consumerism, consumption and communication, everything is offered all at once, in flux and relative to everything, all of the time. Art and corporate imagery intertwine, consumer bio-brands, commodity interface have all become second nature to us. This new tendency addresses today’s overlapping relation between the individual body, identity and collective ideology.

All at Once, All of the Time presented artworks that allowed users to see themselves in the digital world. The artists explored the iconography of identity in relation to new media. They commented on the minimising gap between production and consumption, highlighting defaced iconographies and debunked consumer communities. These works questioned whether the minimising power of the Internet have opened up a virtual utopian space or an ungoverned archive.