PROJECT SPACE / 4 February to 24 February 2011
Movements is a collaborative installation consisting of two separate but thematically-related kinetic artworks. Aiming to be both pointlessly simple and suggestively complex, the works intend to play with the humourous and revealing instinct for people to anthropomorphise and aggrandise the most basic phenomena.
SITE EIGHT / 22 February to 4 March 2011
The Gift and the Curse explores masculinity and vulnerability through the photographic image. Drew Pettifer combines the materiality of paint to allude to bodily fluids and castration and to question acts of violence in the guise of modesty.
SITUATE / 18 February to 30 June 2011
Performance and Video artist Wendy will be working on a new series of performance and video pieces that continue her creative research in Australia. (Woodson was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in residence at VCA in 2006-07). The first project is an ongoing multi-channel video installation entitled Transitions that is based on interviews with refugees and immigrants currently living in Australia; these interviews are exhibited with large scale projected images of displacement, migration and disappearing landscapes. The final version of this project will be exhibited in Melbourne at the Victorian Immigration Museum, July 2011-January 2012. Woodson will also be working a new movement/theater piece entitled Dora that is concerned with relationships between body, memory and ecology. In addition, LaMaMa Theater in Melbourne will present a one woman performance piece, She Turned on the Light, written and directed by Woodson June 22-26, 2011. This piece, written during Woodson's last residency in Melbourne was presented at LaMaMa Etc. in New York last year and features a performance by Brazilian actress Marina Libel.
PROJECT SPACE SPARE ROOM / 7 March to 24 March 2011
The cut is fundamental to fashion design, the creative act that forms the language of the new object. By this physical action of cutting into a material, the cut confers a meaning of the maker that unites fashion designers and artists. The First Cut looks at the moment of inception of an idea exploring both the stages of the creative process when envisaged work materialises and the apprehension and uneasy anticipation of it. Each artist has been chosen for their diversion from mainstream fashion to exhibit new contexts of fashion through interactive installations, performance and object.
SITUATE / 6 to 20 March 2011
Baumann's work is equal parts whimsy and satire, a colourful and effecting investigation into the spectacular, volatile and deceptive nature of contemporary celebration. Her poetic and kinetic sculptures are frequently site specific. They are temporary monuments to indefinite victories. She shares a material vocabulary with the supermarket or the Party Planner, although despite this shiny, happy palette, an insidious anxiety always hovers nearby, waiting.” (Weston, Gemma).
It's Not You, It's Me
PROJECT SPACE SPARE ROOM / 1 April to 21 April 2011
Acting as an electronic mirror, video has occupied a unique role in the way artists have explored changing notions of selfhood. It's Not You, It's Me illustrates a varied and exciting approach to performative video, self-representation and role play.
SITUATE / 12 to 19 April 2011
Wei Tianyu is a lecturer of public art at the East China Normal University, Shanghai. His recent works makes social commentary on the new consumerist culture of China through the medium of sculpture and new media. Born in Shanghai, lecturer of sculpture at China Academy of Art, Hangzhou for over twenty years. In 2008-10 he was the chief curator of Sculpture for the Riversde Landscaping belt at the site of the Shanghai World Expo.
SITUATE / 12 to 19 April 2011
Angela Zhang is currently a lecturer of public art at East China Normal University. She predominantly works in performance and installation. Since 2004 Angela Zhang has travelled between China and the Netherlands, through this period she has increasingly become influenced by ying and yang philosophy of the eternal cycle of life and the balance of opposition and unity of matter of the universe. In her work she has tried to unify the two cultures that influence her with her work being conceptually influenced by Eastern philosophy and her artistic practice being influenced by contemporary western art.
SITE EIGHT / 5 April to 15 April 2011
This exhibition marks the presentation of the RMIT Foundation School of Art Travelling Scholarships. Two awards will be given to School of Art Honours students who display an excellence in studio practice. Funds from the scholarships are designated for travel and enrich the student with a RMIT Global Passport. The scholarships are made available through the generous support from
the RMIT Foundation.
SITE EIGHT / 19 April to 29 April 2011
Trans is a state of being "across", "beyond" or "on the opposite side". Two recent graduates who's work crosses the boundaries of sculpture and painting have been selected to explore the trans-disciplinary culture with the School.
PROJECT SPACE / 29 April to 19 May 2011
PERFORMANCE / 28 April 2011, 5-7pm
Six New Zealand-based artists engage with the idea of diagram as a generative tool. Diagramconsiders the diagrammatic as a key modality, not simply for two-dimensional art forms, but also sculpture, video and performance-based practices.
SITE EIGHT / 3 May to 13 May 2011
Using a variety of conceptual, aesthetic and formal elements, each media artist conjures their own unique digital environment—turning the gallery into an immersive interface experience.
SITE EIGHT / 24 May to 3 June 2011
In observation of Reconciliation Week 2011. Maritime themes are explored in the context of place, time, cultural identity and Australia's geophysical and psychological relationship to the sea. Indigenous and settler-heritage artists consider historical and contemporary events, exploration, colonisation and migration and their effect on upon Indigenous culture.
PROJECT SPACE / 27 May to 16 June 2011
Four Western Australian artists bring together ideas of place, time, becoming, space and relational geography that test the possibilities and complexities of location.
PROJECT SPACE / 24 June to 14 July 2011
SITUATE / 9 May – 30 June 2011
RMIT SITUATE is commencing an annual Indigenous residency exchange between Canada and Australia. The University of Lethbridge in Canada has selected Tanya Harnett, First Nation artist and Co-chair of Native American Studies, to undertake the inaugural exchange. Tanya has a substantial profile in North America as both an artist and Indigenous rights spokesperson. The School of Art SITUATE Program is proud to host this initiative on behalf of the University.
SPARE ROOM / 24 June to 14 July 2011
By meditatively drawing graphite lines on the interior of Spare Room, Conway creates a protective zone in which to escape from the bombardment of electromagnetic signals which surround us. This protected area allows us to reconnect with the earth's natural frequency as well as our own internal rhythms, raising awareness of the unseen forces that affect our lives and our health.
PROJECT SPACE SPARE ROOM / 22 July to 11 August 2011
This solo exhibition brings together a series of ecologically-based works, which each tell an individual narrative about time and place. It focuses on the concepts of recollection and collection—of memory, of something remembered from the past, and of something collected and preserved.
PROJECT SPACE / 19 August to 8 September 2011
The New Pretty is the first Australian solo exhibition by LA-based artist Erik Mark Sandberg. Drawing from contemporary consumer culture and its psychological effects, Sandberg's uncanny portrait gallery embodies the self-consciousness of a contemporary generation living under the social media microscope, and the double-edged promise of instant celebrity. Cultural dichotomies form a source of inspiration for much of Sandberg's work.
Erik Sandberg is a guest of RMIT University through the School of Art international Artist In Residence Program—SITUATE.
SITE EIGHT / 7 June To 17 June 2011
This series of exhibitions acknowledges the long-standing contributions and achievements of the School of Art's alumni. Link V will feature artists from the Gold and Silversmithing and Ceramics studios.
SITE EIGHT / 21 June to 1 July 2011
This exhibition presents a selection of works from current MFA students and alumni in Melbourne, New Zealand and Hong Kong.
PROJECT SPACE / 16 September to 6 October 2011
SITUATE / 22 July to 18 September 2011
Through multimedia installations Hornek investigates culture, memory and landscape. She "explores space as a kind of interface, as a process connecting and disconnecting specific localities from the global forces that structure and striate them. In this space Hornek's work critiques and unravels these structures to create brief moments of autonomy and freedom." (Stephen Zepke)
Katrin Hornek is a guest of RMIT through the SITUATE Austrian Arts Residency Exchange.
SITE EIGHT / 6 July to 15 July 2011
SITUATE / 1 to 7 July 2011
Suh is a contemporary Korean painter—a narrative painter in the great tradition of storytellers who's practice has contributed to and grows from a long tradition of Expressionistic painting. He paints scenes from daily life, his work engaging with "the movement of the world through a transient sensibility and the movement of a sensibility through a transient world." (D. Thomas, 2011)
Suh, Yong Sun is a guest of RMIT University through the School of Art's international Artist In Residence Program - SITUATE.
SITE EIGHT / 20 July to 29 July 2011
SITUATE / 18 July to 3 August 2011
Lam creates large sculptural works using recycled materials, transforming these discarded objects into functional forms. These site-specific works explore issues relating to local culture, history, society and current affairs. In Micro Economy she highlights how industry has changed from 'producing' to 'serving and providing', and how the arts have also changed from the 'production of artwork' to the 'generation of creativity'.
Jaffa Lam is a guest of RMIT SITUATE.
SITE EIGHT / 3 August to 12 August 2011
Crème showcases the diversity of talent in the School of Art's TAFE, Undergraduate and Postgraduate programs.
SITE EIGHT / 26 September to 30 September 2011
Melanie Yazzie has invited a diverse range of printmakers and print-based artists from around the globe to participate in an international exchange portfolio entitled Circle of Print. For this project Yazzie encouraged artists to consider the fold as a premise or thematic for their work.
This exhibition is part of the Print Council of Australia's Month of Print.
SPARE ROOM / 16 September to 6 October 2011
The term "Conversation Piece", used to categorize a painting genre of the 18th century, evokes an aural dimension in a period where no audio-visual construct outside live theatre was in existence. The combination of mobile audio technologies and visual effects that suggest absence—such as blue screen compositing—are used in place of painting in this recent video series.
SITE EIGHT / 4 October to 14 October 2011
Videos by twelve Swedish artists exploring social, political, cultural and psychological aspects of living in contemporary society through narratives and storytelling.
SITUATE / 26 September to 11 October 2011
Ian Milliss in his 45 years as an artist has been a formalist, a conceptualist, a green bans and anti-prison activist and a founder of the Artworkers Union. He has worked across, through, and beyond the arts sector -- with Christo & Jeanne-Claude, the trade union movement, the Australia Council, in political campaigning, publishing, policy development, art and heritage management, blogging, creative industry development and more. Although he occasionally exhibits he has always thought that galleries are just one small part of the range of tools available for the artist’s job of cultural innovation and adaptation. His latest project at ACCA is a collaboration that revisits a thwarted mid 70s project about sustainable farming and the definition of the artist.
SITE EIGHT / 8 to 18 November 2011
Two honours graduates from the fine art photography studio question gender identity in mass media, challenge the conventional perceptions of transgender, and reconsider the image of female empowerment.
SITE EIGHT / 22 November to 2 December 2011
Hivemind brings together four emerging artists—graduating honours students from the drawing and painting studios. These artists explore memory and cultural behaviour to consider the ever-changing relationship between one's self and one's society.
SITUATE / 16 August to 17 October 2011
Kate's practice utilises knitting, mixed media sculpture, collage, video and digital print to create tactile sculptures and installations which reinterpret feminine identities, histories, myths and icons. Kate Just is represented by Daine Singer, Melbourne.
SITUATE / October to December 2011
Eric's work uses humour, pop-culture and race and gender politics to derange and re-inform public perception, and disillusion of stereotypes and cultural identities. His major interests are positioned towards ideas of tribalism and ethnographic studies, sport cultures, and trends informing contemporary masculinity. As an Australian/Papua New Guinean, his work is informed by his dual heritage and critical observations of the cultures that define both places.
PROJECT SPACE SPARE ROOM / 14 October to 10 November 2011
A series of site and time-specific works engaging the physical and metaphoric reality of tidal forces, perceptual phenomena and threshold spaces. The gallery becomes a space of alignment, between: the moon's draw on the planet's water bodies; the axis of the imagination; the motion of the globe; and the act of drawing—in light, time, material and space—as an expression of both internal and external life cycles. Through variations and inter-relations of scale and form, the intimate and the expansive emerge each through the other.
PROJECT SPACE SPARE ROOM / 18 November to 15 December 2011
The Print Imaging Practice Residency Exhibition
Artists embrace the current state of printmaking in diverse and distinctive ways. They combine old and new print technologies, engage in repetition and its variant as well as unpack the print process to include process as the content of a print. The burgeoning presence of Indigenous prints, creative collaboration between custom printer and artist, changing art and print-related hierarchies and international print portability all inform contemporary print culture. A specially commissioned print from each artist is included in the exhibition.
Graham Badari, Michael Florrimell. Joel Gailer, Kate James, Heather Shimmen, Andrew Sinclair and Erik Sandberg [USA], curated by Dr Ruth Johnstone
