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Pleasure
RMIT Gallery
29 November 2019 - 7 March 2020
Pleasure presents the work of a diverse group of artists who use the body to celebrate joy, humour, flamboyance and the outrageous. From decoration, embellishment and exaggeration to examinations of identity and beauty and its various interpretations, Pleasure explores how artists and designers have used the body as a personal, provocative and at times political canvas from the flamboyant 1980s to contemporary times.
In Pleasure we are called on to question why we feel the way we do about our bodies and asked to defy the immediate – though hollow – pleasures found in the production and consumption of mass media, pornography and advertising.
The work presented in Pleasure by more than 35 artists challenges our ideas on what pleasure is, and how our bodies give, receive and broadcast pleasure. These works will lift spirits, evoke wonder, make us ponder, perhaps laugh and even flinch. They may be saucy, savvy, erotic and provocative – pleasure after all is a subjective joy.
Pleasure does not take itself seriously and offers a cacophony of resistance through multiple voices both introspective and bold. We invite you on a journey through diverse pleasures and frivolity, into an exuberant world view full of slippages, contradictions and minor perversities.
Delight and embrace. Be pleasured!
Curators: Julian Goddard, Helen Rayment & Evelyn Tsitas.
Artists including:
Rose Agnew, Robyn Beeche, Holly Block, Queenie Bon Bon, Gavin Brown, Penny Byrne, Frances Cannon, Nicholas Chilvers, Keith W Clancy, Kate Clark, Ray Cook, Peter Ellis, Dita Gambiro, Gerwyn Davies, Kate Durham with Moira Finucane, Rhett D’Costa, William Eicholtz, Leah Emery, Tarryn Gill, Judith Glover, Gun Shy, Mella Jaarsma, Kate Just, Grace Lillian Lee, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, David McDiarmid, Louise Meuwissen, Misklectic, Mossy 333 & Misklectic, Ciara Murphy, John Pastoriza-Piñol, Robert Pearce, Mithu Sen, Laksmi Shitaresmi, Cop Shiva, Vipoo Srivilasa, TextaQueen, Christian Thompson, Peter Tully, Wayan Upadana, VERMIN with Jenny Bannister, Xylouris White, William Yang, Paul Yore, Ah Xian, Preston Zly.
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MasterMakers
RMIT Gallery
6 September - 9 November 2019
Since the 1980s, leading Australian and international Gold and Silversmithing artists have delivered and participated in masterclasses in the RMIT School of Art which has had a profound impact on the training of the craft in Australia.
This major exhibition explores the masterclass legacy, showcasing both recent works of the visiting ‘master makers’ and work produced at the master classes, as well as recording the cultural, artistic and technical shift in contemporary jewellery and object.
Featuring beautiful handmade work, intricate detailing and an incredible array of materials and unsual combinations, MasterMakers is a celebration of skill and devotion.
Curator: Mark Edgoose
Featuring artists:
Ruby Aitchison, Helen Aitken-Kuhnen, Robert Baines, Nicholas Bastin, Peter Bauhuis, Dianne Beevers, Doris Betz, Renee Bevan, David Bielander, Julie Blyfield, Zoe Brand, Helen Britton, Sue Buchanan, Melissa Cameron, Bifei Cao, Pamela Chan, Yu Fang Chi, David Clarke, Anna Clynes, Katie Collins, Conversation Piece (Beatrice Brovia & Nicholas Cheng), Anna Davern, Helen Dilkes, Bin Dixon-Ward, Joungmee Do, Mark Edgoose, Sian Edwards, Ian Ferguson, Karl Fritsch, Emi Fukuda, Eli Giannini, Kiko Gianocca, Allona Goren, Rowena Gough, Wayne Guest, Caz Guiney, Marcos Guzman, Mary Hackett, Kirsten Haydon, Peter Hoogeboom, Marian Hosking, Katherine Hubble, Linda Hughes, David Huycke, Naoko Inuzuka, Kazuhiro Itoh, Nicole Jacquard, Tassia Joannides, Cara Johnson, Hermann Jünger, Jiro Kamata, Jung-Hoo Kim, Inari Kiuru, Wendy Korol, Daniel Kruger, Otto Künzli, Andrew Last, Benjamin Lignel, Sue Lorraine, Carlier Makigawa, Stefano Marchetti, Marion Marshall, Chris Massey, Claire McArdle, Kelly McDonald, Lindy McSwan Sam Mertens, Karl Millard, Yutaka Minegishi, Marc Monzó, Shelley Norton, Michaela Pegum, Jana Roman, Lucy Sarneel, Elise Sheehan, Debbie Sheezel, Bettina Speckner, Michelle Stewart, Leah Teschendorff, Elizabeth Turrell, Renée Ugazio, Manon van Kouswijk, Michael Wong and Aurelia Yeomans.
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Insistent: Gestures
RMIT Gallery
6 September - 9 November 2019
Insistent. Gestures. brings together the work of five artists who live, work or were born in Asia to explore personal narratives, diasporic identity and the use of repetition.
The exhibition considers the role of materials, bodily gestures and the intimate experience of making. These artists share related geographical histories and connections that respond to their stories and experience of making. Through repetitive cutting, assembling, sewing, weaving, and layering the simple materials chosen by each artist grow in complexity. The constant movement central to each artist’s process gives rise to the contemplation of time and space, and an introspective understanding of body and mind
The repetitive movements – or insistent gestures – of making carry a sense of ritual and intimate recollection that resonates with the artists’ personal histories. Here an insistent, female and labour creating subjectivity is woven into being.
Curator: Yu Fang Chi.
Artists: Kazumi Nagano(Japan), Yong Joo Kim(South Korea), Chen Chun Tai(Taiwan), Cyrus(Wai-Kuen) Tang(Hong Kong/Australia), Yu Fang Chi (Taiwan/ Australia).
This exhibition is part of Radiant Pavilion – Early career curator mentorship, which offers an exciting opportunity for early career curator Yu Fang Chi to undertake a mentorship with RMIT Design Hub Gallery Curator Kate Rhodes. This opportunity is generously supported by the City of Melbourne and Creative Victoria.
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Super Tight
RMIT Design Hub Gallery
25 July - 20 September 2019
Super Tight explored the culture of spatial tightness emerging in Asian cities and its creative potential. This immersive exhibition considered techniques for living closely, unpacking the delight and difficulty that arises from the dense occupation of large cities.
More than half the world lives in cities, more than half the world lives in Asia, more than half of the world's megacities are in Asia. Asian cities are therefore key in examining new ways of being densely urbanised. The by-product of unprecedented metropolitan convergence is the emergence of new urbanisms and new architectures, new models for living and making culture.
“Super tight” describes the small, intense, robust and hyper-condensed spaces that emerge as a by-product of extreme levels of urban density. Tightness is both a consequence of density (but is not density itself) and a series of social, economic and cultural practices that have developed in response to the rapid growth and consolidation of cities.
In Super Tight we asked: are big cities inherently tight, or is tightness something that transcends density and can emerge without vast populations? Is tightness desirable and how is the concept relevant to thinking about future Australian cities? While urban density has been heavily explored, Super Tight looked specifically at the culture of tightness that has emerged in Asian cities over the past 30 years, and the role that designers have played in the material and social behaviours of tightness.
The exhibition examined the emergence of dense urban environments with an eye on the social, political, economic and regulatory issues that have led to the generation of present-day cities in Asia. It speculated on what causes density, how dense cities become tight, and how cultural tightness emerged.
Super Tight looked at what it means to live and work closely, through not only formal or spatial qualities, but through the sounds and feel of closeness. The exhibition questioned social attitudes to tightness, both in Australia and abroad. More broadly it proposed the concept of the “super tight” as an approach to design and culture that is valuable.
Curators and exhibition design: Graham Crist, John Doyle, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto (Atelier Bow-Wow), with a new major installation by Taishin Shiozaki (Shiozaki Laboratory).
Graphic design: Pandarosa
Super Tight contributors:
Super Tight cinema: Studio Wasabi (Rafael Balboa with Yasemin Sahiner, Architects, Tokyo); Sanuki Daisuke Architects (Sanuki Daisuke, Architect & Hiroyuki Oki, Photographer, Ho Chi Minh City); Desiree Grunewald (Illustrator, Ho Chi Minh City); Sue Hajdu (Photographer & Writer, Ho Chi Minh City); Drawing Architecture Studio (Li Han & Hu Yan, Beijing); Tohru Horiguchi (Architect & Academic, Osaka); Mass Studies (Minsuk Cho, Architect, Seoul); New Office Works (Paul Tse & Evelyn Ting, Architects,Hong Kong) Archie Pizzini (Architect & Photographer, Ho Chi Minh City), Andrew Stiff (Film-maker, Ho Chi Minh City); Tomito Architecture (Tomito Ito & Miho Tominaga, Yokahama); WOHA (Wong Mun Summ & Richard Hassell, Architects, Singapore); Thierry Bernard-Gotteland (Sound Recording Artist, Ho Chi Minh City); Superimpose (Ruben Bergambagt, Ben de Lange, Carolyn Leung, Architects, Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai).
Overlapping City: Taishin Shiozaki (Shiozaki Laboratory & Tokyo Tech), Chika Kato, Tatsuya Ide, Hyuga Obana, Li Qiaozhi, Yu Ziliang
Studio contributors: Tenshan Volodymyr Dereznichenki, Taiki Hayata, Sho Tanaka, Kano Maeda, Megumi Nagashima, Shika Nakazawa, Jun Sato, Kaori Shiota, Hirotaka Sugisaki, Yoshimasa Sugihara, Che Jin, Yushiro Hirose.
This exhibition is part of Open House Melbourne 2019.
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Melbourne Modern: European art & design at RMIT since 1945
RMIT Gallery
21 June - 17 August 2019
In the wake of World War II hundreds of exiled and displaced European artists, architects and designers arrived in Melbourne and sought employment with RMIT. Melbourne Modern traces a legacy of European intervention and interdisciplinarity through successive generations of RMIT teachers and students to the present day.
Curators: Jane Eckett and Harriet Edquist.
Artists: Tate Adams, Helen Aitken-Kuhnen, Robert Baines, George Baldessin, Geoffrey Bartlett, Nicholas Bastin, Richard Beck, Peter Boyd, Peter Clarke, Jock Clutterbuck, Terry Cockrem, Su san Cohn, Simon Cottrell, Robert K. Cranage, Leonard Crawford, Norman Creighton, Augustine Dall’Ava, John Davis, Jenny de Nijs, Ken G. Eastwood, Mark Edgoose, Maggie Edmond, Nina Ellis, Peter Ellis, Marion Fletcher, Emily Floyd, Ken Foletta, Ernest Fooks, Hendrik Forster, Ernst Fries, Mari Funaki, Peter Gertler, Donald Gore, Wayne Guest, Bruce Hall, Kirsten Haydon, Gerard Herbst, Hermann Hohaus, Marian Hosking, Robert Jacks, Adrianus Janssens, George Johnson, Vincas Jomantas, N.Rex Keogh, Grahame King, Inge King, Hertha Kluge-Pott, George Kral, Johannes Kuhnen, Andrew Last, Sanné Mestrom, Robert Owen, Robert Pataki, Anthony Pryor, Geoffrey Putman, Norma Redpath, Frederick Romberg, Greg Scarlett, Beatrice Schlabowsky, Tor Schwanck, Antonia Sellbach, Udo Sellbach, Denise Sprynskyj, John Stirling, Frederick Sterne, Fleur Summers, Howard Tozer, Gus van der Heyde, Fran van Riemsdyk, Victor Vodicka, Wolf Wennrich, Margaret West, Normana Wight, Miloslav Zika, Paul Zika, Teisutis Zikaras, Klaus Zimmer, Phillip Zmood.
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Bruised: Art Action and Ecology in Asia
RMIT Gallery
12 April - 1 June 2019
When it comes to ways in which artists address ecological issues, actions can be big or small – it’s the action that is important however subtle. In the face of complex environmental problems ‘Bruised: Art Action and Ecology in Asia’ examines how artistic response combined with gentle activism can result in a rich legacy and empower further actions in the community.
Bruised: Art Action and Ecology features an element of Indonesian artist Tintin Wulia’s major work 855 Kilograms of Homes in Another State, which uses cardboard waste to examine the politics of recycling and the wealth made from human labour.
A living grass installation by Arahmaiani, one of Indonesia’s most respected and iconic contemporary artists, provides a powerful and provocative commentary on land ownership.
The brutal exploration of the palm oil industry is addressed by German artist Armin Linke, whose film investigates the rapidly expanding demand for palm oil and its derivative products and terrifying consequences for Asia’s tropical rainforests.
What happens when the water runs out in your apartment block? Singapore film maker Sherman Ong presents an engaging exploration into human nature and obstacles that we may need to confront in the face of an environmental crisis.
In a cross-cultural project, Brisbane artist Mandy Ridley found common ground working with three Indian artists to reflect through memories of nature on shared childhood experiences between Bihar and Gippsland.
Using simple materials such as trolleys attached to sculptures of buildings, Isabel and Alfredo Aquilizan’s work reflects on their personal experience of migration from the Philippines, as well as the hardship of such journeys at a time when people are moving around the world at speeds previously unseen in human history.
Curators: Helen Rayment with Thao Nguyen.
Artists: Arahmaiani, Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, Made Bayak, Yu Fang Chi, Ishan Khosla, Ryoko Kose, Pradyumna Kumar, Pushpa Kumari, Armin Linke, Ly Hoàng Ly, James Nguyen, Sherman Ong, Sarker Protick, Fitri Ranatarya, Mandy Ridley, Khvay Samnang, Gigi Scaria, Lizzy Simpson, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Tintin Wulia, Bo Zheng.
As part of the exhibition, Bruised Food: a living laboratory, curated by Marnie Badham and Francis Maravillas, presents a working kitchen and events to explore the politics and aesthetics of food as employed by contemporary social practice artists: Keg de Souza with Lucien Alperstein, Arahmaiani, Rhett D’Costa, Elia Nurvista and Stephen Loo.
Bruised: Art Action and Ecology in Asia is part of the of ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2019 23 April–19 May, a socially-engaged festival of exhibitions, theatre works, keynote lectures, events and artist talks considering climate change impacts and the challenges and opportunities arising from climate change.
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The Model Citizen
RMIT Gallery
8 February - 23 March 2019
Are you a model citizen?
Meet the micro lenses of surveillance and audit culture; the algorithm of benign search engines; the political poetry of embodied dance; the veneer of the celebrity citizen; the performative monotony of routine; the bio-power of the viral robot; the ghostly noise of a thousand newsreaders speaking all at once, and the hopeful threads and fibres of participatory culture.
Curators: Sean Redmond and Darrin Verhagen.
Artists: Asim Bhatti with John McCormick and Adam Nash, David Cross, Larissa Hjorth, Leah Kardos with Sean Redmond, Jondi Keane, Bronek Kozka, Lyn McCredden with Shaun McLeod and Olivia Millard, Patrick Pound with Rowan McNaught, Victor Renolds, Sadia Sadia, Polly Stanton, Darren Verhagen and (((20hz))).
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All the jewellery
RMIT Design Hub Gallery
28 January - 3 May 2019
All the jewellery was an exhibition that existed in relationship with Lisa Walker's retrospective at RMIT Design Hub Gallery. This exhibition of workshops tackled key questions about contemporary jewellery. It brought together a community of jewellers, gallerists and collectors and those in the professions that support jewellery-making into weekly conversations. Each week a different question was publicly debated and the structure of the workshops took multiple forms: a discussion, a masterclass, a performance, a seance, for example.
All the jewellery was an expansive equivalent of Lisa’s show in the number of participants and in the vast terrain of ideas and perspectives we intended to uncover over the period of both exhibitions. Each workshop was represented as a film within the exhibition, forming an archive of the current discourse around contemporary jewellery.
Workshop leaders:
Lisa Walker, Claire McArdle, Chloë Powell, Mark Edgoose, Mikala Dwyer, Robyn Healy, non/fiction Lab at RMIT, Debris Facility, Hannah Presley, Roseanne Bartley, Su san Cohn, Manon van Kouswijk, Meredith Turnbull and Behn Woods, RMIT Gold & Silversmithing.
Participants:
Kay Abude, Suzie Attiwill, Blake Barns, Roseanne Bartley, Nicholas Bastin, Fionn Batcherlor, Ciaran Begley, Ricarda Bigolin, Vito Bila, Robin Bold, Barbara Bolt, Helen Britton, John Brooks, Bonny Cassidy, Yu Fang Chi, Justin Clements, Su san Cohn, Gretchen Coombs, Anna Davern, Laura Deakin, Julia deVille, Bin Dixon-Ward, Clementine Edwards, Melody Ellis, Else Fitzgerald, Fiona Fitzgerald, Smiljana Glisovic, Anna Gray, Tarryn Handcock, Ceri Hann (Public Assembly), Kirsten Haydon, Loni Jeffs, Tassia Joannides, Danius Kesminas, Manon van Kouswijk, Spencer Lai, Simone LeAmon, Bridie Lunney, Vicki Mason, Alex McGuire, Chantal McDonald, Kelly McDonald, Lindy McSwan, Kate Meakin, Jane Morely, Natalia Milosz-Piekarska, Scott Mitchell, Kevin Murray, Peta Murray, Belinda Newick, Tiffany Parbs, Michaela Pegum, Sean Peoples, Lynda Roberts (Public Assembly), Myles Russel-Cook, Katie Scott, Rachel Simoons, Tallulah Storm, Lucinda Straham, Jessica Tan, Blanche Tilden, Michael Trudgeon, Renee Ugazio, Lisa Waup, Louise Weaver.
Graphic design: Ziga Testen and Kim Mumm Hansen
Films: Antuong Nguyen
Curators: Kate Rhodes and Nella Themelios
This exhibition was a part of the 2019 Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival, Melbourne Art Book Fair organised by the National Gallery of Victoria and Melbourne Design Week 2019, an initiative of the Victorian Government in collaboration with the NGV.
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Lisa Walker: She wants to go to her bedroom but she can’t be bothered
RMIT Design Hub Gallery
28 January - 3 May 2019
She wants to go to her bedroom but she can’t be bothered was a retrospective of the practice of New Zealand jeweller Lisa Walker. Lisa’s vast body of work is a career-length conversation with the question: what is jewellery? So much of what we want to say about the medium and the discipline of jewellery can be found in her work: it is simultaneously wearable and unwearable, precious and non-precious, skilfully and not skilfully made; it is in dialogue with jewellery’s past as well as current social and political issues and, sometimes, it is meaningless. Lisa’s jewellery is controversial in many of the moves it makes but now, nearly 30 years after she began creating work, her radical gestures are the establishment. The exhibition tracked how Lisa continues to query the tools, methods and materials for making jewellery, and how her work appropriates and transforms its influences. Lisa’s research practice – circling around the history, future and limits of jewellery – takes us into the realm of extremes with the aim of making jewellery, and our encounter of it, more alive.
She wants to go to her bedroom but she can’t be bothered was accompanied by All the jewellery, an exhibition that exists in a relationship with Lisa Walker’s retrospective. This exhibition had free workshops which tackled key questions about contemporary jewellery. It brought together a community of jewellers, gallerists and collectors and those in the professions that support jewellery-making into a weekly conversation.
Accompanying this exhibition was a significant publication titled An unreliable guidebook to jewellery by Lisa Walker. Edited by Kate Rhodes and Nella Themelios. Graphic Design by Ziga Testen and Kim Mumm Hansen. New photography by Layla Cluer.
Exhibition design: Lisa Walker
Graphic design: Ziga Testen and Kim Mumm Hansen
These exhibitions were a part of the 2019 Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival, Melbourne Art Book Fair organised by the National Gallery of Victoria and Melbourne Design Week 2019 organised by the National Gallery of Victoria in collaboration with Creative Victoria.
