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Tintin Wulia: Secrets
RMIT Gallery
5 December 2023 - 27 January 2024
Tintin Wulia is an Indonesian Australian artist whose work reflects on globalisation and geopolitics and uses personal stories to unpick and lay them bare. For over 20 years she has researched the histories that have been told by the world’s dominant narrators, scrutinising their blindspots and systemic inequities and retelling them from nonconforming perspectives. Wulia’s recounting brings the past powerfully into the present and centres it on the voices of the periphery. Her works decode, reinterpret and represent history, orienting us to the current global situation in an effort to help collectively navigate towards a more socially just future.
Tintin Wulia: Secrets is an exhibition produced by RMIT Culture to celebrate Wulia as an RMIT alumna and internationally significant artist. It is prepared in conjunction with Wulia’s artistic research project at the University of Gothenburg entitled Protocols of Killings: 1965, distance, and the ethics of future warfare funded by the Swedish Research Council (2020-02828), and is co-supported by various institutions and collaborators.
Curator: Andrew Tetzlaff
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In her own words: The ceramics of Janet Beckhouse
RMIT Gallery
12 October - 11 November 2023
“In my practice, I sculpt clay. It’s the medium I’ve chosen to express myself. The tactile feeling and quality of clay are what I love.”
– Janet Beckhouse
Janet Beckhouse was a master of her craft, working clay into complex and distinct works of art. Her pieces examine the dilemmas of life and death and prompt us to rethink familiar objects with her distinctive almost hallucinatory iconography.
“How can we hope to compete with autumn leaves, a sea breeze, grass blowing in the wind, a sunset, the life cycle of the cicada, the plants and creatures of this world who need nothing more than just exist.”
– Janet Beckhouse
Her hand crafted pieces are ornamental, grand and gruesome while also intimate and delightful in their depiction of shells and mermaids, skulls and worms. A narrative in every work challenging us with a twist of disquiet, some discomfort and a teaspoon of disturbing. Shown alongside key entries and drawings from her journals, discover the delightful process of Janet Beckhouse in her own words.
An esteemed alumna of RMIT’s School of Art, RMIT Gallery is proud to present this exhibition of Janet Beckhouse’s ceramics and journals, to celebrate her profound contribution and legacy.
Curator: Helen Rayment
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Spring
RMIT Gallery
5 September - 11 November 2023
Transitions, moods and optimism
Spring contemplates states of seasonal transition, reflecting on the optimism around cultural notions of springtime. Spring in Melbourne / Naarm is windy, unpredictable and the weather changes easily. The local Indigenous people, the Wurundjeri, aptly map springtime conditions in Melbourne / Naarm between August and November – a time that reflects fast-paced changes in weather conditions – three seasons rather than one: Guling, Poorneet and Buath Garru.
Springtime is about renewal, seasonally associated with warmer weather, blossoming flowers and the bursting forth of new growth. In our everyday life Spring events are the markers of society, embedded in the Australian psyche. Exploring RMIT’s collections Spring presents a broad range of multidisciplinary work spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuriesfocusing on the influence that this seasonal interlude has on our social and emotional states.
Rupert Bunny’s Shelter II promotes an idyllic scene of lavish celebration, with pale greens and subdued pinks that recall a sunny spring day in the countryside. Paired with contemporary sculptural forms by Kate Rohde and Susan Flavell, and shown alongside bright, abstract paintings by Yuendumu artist Judy Napangardi Watson, Spring curatorially links Australian sensibilities, reflecting on the change that seasonal transitions can bring.
Works of art and design are from the RMIT’s cultural collections including the RMIT Design Archives, the University Art Collection, the Australian Film Institute Research Collection, RMIT Archives and rare books. They demonstrate the rich diversity of art, design and social history prominent in RMIT’s expansive cultural holdings.
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Stephanie Misa: An altar for the fleshy tongue
RMIT Gallery
5 - 30 September 2023
Stephanie Misa (Philippines/Austria) is a visiting Krems Residency artist and researcher whose work centres around decolonising methodologies. Her artistic practice connects multicultural collaboration, curating and feminist criticism to examine the phenomena of language in its oral form and the richness of multilingualism.
In her new installation An altar for the fleshy tongue, Stephanie Misa examines the relationship between language and colonisation. Can language be inscribed bodily, handed down through generations so one comes to know language as a sensory encounter, existing in an alternative, intuitive and non-indexed paradigm?
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Wild Hope: Conversations for a Planetary Commons
RMIT Design Hub Gallery
14 August - 29 September 2023
Experience a world where imagination and urgency unite, where art, research and design become agents for change to address the climate crisis.
Welcome to Wild Hope, an extraordinary exhibition and public program that invites you to embrace a radical shift towards ‘planetary thinking’ – where place-based community living is intimately linked with sustaining our environments.
We live in an age of disruption, facing interconnected challenges unconstrained by national borders – climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics and forced migration. In response, we must understand oceans, air, rivers, soil, minerals, forests, glaciers and species biodiversity, among other things, as beyond borders and therefore a collective responsibility. We must learn from Indigenous knowledges and practices and work together to compassionately shape our shared future.
Design Hub Gallery showcases visionary works by artists, designers, and creative practitioners who are embracing a shift towards this ‘planetary thinking’ in innovative ways.
Wild Hope: Conversations for Planetary Commons dares us to have wild hope in dark times.
Practitioners include: Marnie Badham and Tammy Wong Hulbert; Vicki Couzens; Dean Cross; D&K (Chantal Kirby, Ricarda Bigolin) with Žiga Testen; Jessie French; Kate Geck; Marc Gibson; Pirjo Haikola, Tom Park; Kirsten Haydon; Openwork, Sarah Lynn Rees with RMIT ICON Science; Alex Le Guillou; Grace Lillian Lee; Machine Listening (Sean Dockray, James Parker & Joel Stern); Clare McCracken, Rebecca Najdowski and Polly Stanton; Georgia Nowak and Eugene Perepletchikov; Caitlyn Parry & Helen Duong; Maj Plemenitas; RMIT Architecture Immersive Futures Lab and Superscale (Patrick Macasaet, Vei Tan, Shuming Ivy Zhou and Zechen Huang); David Rousell and Amy Cutter-Mackenzie-Knowles; Greg Semu; These Are The Projects We Do Together (Millie Cattlin and Joseph Norster)
Exhibition Curatorium: Naomi Stead, Fleur Watson, Wendy Steele, Katrina Simon
Exhibition graphic design: Stuart Geddes
Part of the City of Melbourne’s Now or Never festival.
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Closer Together
RMIT Gallery
20 June - 13 August 2023
‘Closer Together’ reflects on the 25-year cross-cultural relationship between the Hong Kong Art School and RMIT’s School of Art. It is proudly one of the university’s longest running transnational educational partnerships.
The Chinese classic text the ‘Tao Te Ching’ suggests that the world is made up of what we know and what we don’t know, which are ultimately the same. ‘Closer Together’ proposes that togetherness, creative dialogue and art-making can help us understand this – that through these processes we can come to better know the mysteries of the unknown. This exhibition shines a light on 15 artists from the Hong Kong Art School and RMIT community whose works celebrate connectivity and kinship and uncover new knowledge through exchange.
Artists include Kay Mei Ling Beadman, Movana Chen, Ryan Christopher Cheng, Kris Coad, Carolyn Eskdale, Daphne Alexis Ho, Jaffa Lam, Ivy MA King Chu, Sally Mannall, Drew Pettifer, Kate Siu Man Kit, Scotty So, Kwong San Tang, Fiona Wong Lai Ching and June Wong
Curated by Shirky Chan, Rachel Cheung and Tammy Wong Hulbert.
This project has been supported by the Hong Kong Art School (HKAS) and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, Sydney (HKETO, Sydney).
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Plump
RMIT Gallery
18 - 27 May 2023
The growing climate crisis is impacting more than just our ecosystems. The continual decline of environmental health is also contributing to an existential eco-anxiety in the community. In some cases, eco-anxiety can even manifest in physical ways, such as an increased heart rate. Is there a way to alleviate these physical symptoms by reconnecting with other species’ experiences?
Plump is an embodied sensemaking object that emulates the slow beating of a seal’s heart. Participants are encouraged to embrace the object in any form to feel its heartbeat, relaxing the participant through a more-than-human experience and encouraging reflection on their eco-anxieties.
The experience prompts visitors to reconsider the narrative of human-centered living by introducing multi-species experiences, in order to shift our current relationship with the climate crisis.
Designed and conceptualised by recent RMIT Master of Design Innovation and Technology graduate Stephanie Ochona, this exhibition builds on their milestone project led by Dr Pirjo Haikola and Dr Lawrence Harvey.
To complement the installation a panel of industry fellows and experts will discuss how design can encourage reflection on the climate crisis and possibilities beyond the human.
Proudly supported by NGV Melbourne Design Week.
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Radical Utopia
RMIT Gallery
21 February - 27 May 2023
Melbourne in the 1980s was the site for new ideas to emerge, bend and transform the city, making its mark in post-modern design and media. Radical Utopia: an archaeology of a creative city explores the ways design and activism shaped the innovative cultural city we know today.
Radical Utopia focuses on the studios, places, and spectacles of Melbourne where design was fiercely debated and produced. Surveying nightclubs, fashion parades, architecture media, gaming labs, graphic design collectives and everything in-between, Radical Utopia provides a map of the cultural infrastructure of the city and inner suburbs.
Curators: Harriet Edquist and Helen Stuckey
