Penelope Moye is one of the recipients of the 2018 Honours Travelling Scholarship, an award which is generously supported by RMIT University School of Art. Penelope plans to travel to the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy to undertake research focused on the initiation of a project at the intersection of art and psychoanalysis. The intended travel will allow Penelope to develop and deepen her research into the confluence of psychoanalytic theory and processes and her art practice. As she intends to continue studying and practicing in both areas, the trip will allow Penelope to visit and investigate the prominent institutions of art and psychoanalysis in Europe where it may be possible to continue her studies at a post-graduate level.
LIGHTSCAPES / 23 July to 18 November 2018 at Bld 2 Lightwell
This project interrogates the complexities of translating the ‘self’ through the materials of photographic practice. How does the ‘self’ behave as it is transformed into light and travels through the lens, as it is broken and re-made to become a photographic self-portrait? What does it mean to become a photograph, and how do we collaborate with the materials of the world–space, time, light–in doing so? This project aims to reconsider the boundaries between human/nonhuman, self/other, memory/imagination when becoming photographic self-portraits.
LIGHTSCAPES / 23 July to 18 November 2018 at Rodda Lane
These photographs are taken from a larger collection of urban observational landscape studies from Australia and abroad. These moments aim to capture the ever-evolving relationships between people and their surroundings, retracing the way in which culture becomes embedded in place through modern life and tradition.
SITE EIGHT / 1 to 16 August (Opening Thursday 2 August 5-7pm, Open Wed-Fri 1-5pm & RMIT Open day Sunday 12 August 10am-4pm )
LIGHTSCAPES / 23 July to 18 November 2018 at Knox Place Melbourne Central
Peripheral Vision brings together the work of the 2018 Robyn Beeche Foundation Prize finalists. In honour of the late fashion photographer’s unique vision and experimental capacity, students in their final year of study in the BA Photography program were selected for their inventiveness, sophistication, and responsiveness to the contemporary moment. The photographic works bring into focus what lies outside the direct line of vision, encompassing the dynamics of identity, memory, and social space.
SPEAKER / Wednesday 15 August 2018, 12.30-1.30pm at RMIT Building 12, Level 5, Room 2
Phuong Ngo is a contemporary visual artist; his practice is concerned with the interpretation of history, memory and place, and how it impacts individual and collected identity. His collaborative practice with Hwafern Quach, Slippage, examines the cycles of history in conjunction with current geopolitical and economic issues through the lens of vernacular cultures, artefacts and language.
SITUATE / 10 July to 3 September 2018
PROJECT SPACE / 17 August to 27 September 2018 (Opening Thursday 16 August 5-7pm)
The chicken is dead. Beheaded, but still running.
In his photographic recollections Siegmund Skalar records seemingly unimportant details, glitches and social observations on film. Car Story contrast the narrative of everyday life with a playful and expressive notion on the medium’s tradition.
Siegmund Skalar is a guest of SITUATE as a part of the 2018 SITUATE Austrian Arts Residency Exchange. He works with film and photography and lives in Vienna.
SPARE ROOM / 17 August to 27 September 2018 (Opening Thursday 16 August 2018)
Liminal is to occupy a physiological or psychological threshold or boundary. Space Between considers artists who explore the undefined or barely perceivable experienced at the liminal. Within the liminal change occurs and is typified by a sense of distance and ambiguity. Each work expands on the space at the liminal, in an effort to communicate and expose the distance and ambiguity of liminal experience.
Felicity Griffin is a recipient of the 2018 RMIT:ART:INTERSECT Curatorial Internship. The Curatorial Internship is a six-month internship which concludes with an exhibition of current RMIT School of Art Honours and Masters of Fine Art students, curated by the intern.
SITE EIGHT / 23 August to 13 September 2018 (Opening Wednesday 22 August 5-7pm, Hours Wednesday to Friday 1-5pm).
Following on from My Monster: The Human Animal Hybrid at RMIT Gallery, Creaturephor examines the human/animal hybrid image specifically as a visual metaphor. This exhibition brings together five artists from Australia and Asia whose work addresses the human psyche through the use of animal representation in juxtaposition to the human body. These artists share a curiosity in the power and persistence of such imagery as metaphor and draw on the deep history of this language from their personal and cultural contexts.
SPEAKER / Tuesday 21 August 2018, 12.30-1.30pm at RMIT Building 1, Level 2, Room 17
Juan Ford’s practice has consistently been engaged with opening up new possibilities for realism in painting. He has employed many strategies that argue around the theoretical ‘problems’ of realism in painting. Ford enjoys exploiting the limited shortcomings of the dull, officially sanctioned dialogue between painting and it’s would-be executioner, photography, in order to develop new potential for realism. While his work evolves and varies across time, it characteristically involves an examination of the human figure and its relationship to its environment.
SPEAKER / Tuesday 4 September 2018, 12.30pm at RMIT Building 1, Level 2, Room 17
Yu-Fang, Chi is a Taiwan-born jewellery artist. In 2014, she moved to Melbourne where she studied PhD degree at RMIT University, School of Art, Gold & Silversmithing. Her research project investigates the concept of femininity in jewellery and objects and its cultural connotations. Yu-Fang introspects the processes of making and the position of female body. Her practice involves repetitive fibre-related techniques which can be connected to traditional domestic art processes.
SPEAKER / Wednesday 12 September 2018, 12.30-1.30pm at RMIT Building 12, Level 5, Room 2
Léuli ML Eshrāghi is a visiting curator with Freja Carmichael, Lana Lopesi, Tarah Hogue and Sarah Biscarra Dilley at the Institute of Modern Art in 2018. He is an artist, curator and Monash University PhD candidate visiting Kulin Nation lands and waters. Léuli hails from the Sāmoan villages of Āpia, Leulumoega, Siʻumu, Salelologa, the Persian village of Najafābād, and other ancestries. His work centres on ceremonial-political practices, language renewal, and Indigenous futures throughout the Great Ocean. Residencies include Sovereign Words (Office of Contemporary Art Norway with Artspace Sydney at the Dhaka Art Summit), Para Site Hong Kong, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and University of British Columbia - Okanagan. He exhibits regularly in Australia and abroad, and serves on the board of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective (Canada), editorial advisory committee for un Magazine, and the Pacific advisory group to Melbourne Museum.
Helen Grogan is the 2018 recipient of the Austrian Arts Residency Exchange.
Drew Pettifer is the recipient of the 2018 Taiwanese Arts Residency Exchange. Drew's residency project aims to reveal some of the hidden histories around the ongoing marriage equality and queer rights debates in Taiwan through archival research, collaborations and interviews. In 2017 the Constitutional Court in Taiwan ruled current marriage laws unconstitutional and gave parliament two years to amend them. Australia’s recent marriage equality debate shares some similarities with that in Taiwan, offering a unique opportunity for discourse, exchange and reflection. The outcome of the residency will take the form of photographs, video interviews, documents and, where available, objects that inform this history. A secondary strand of the project will focus on taking photographs in the landscape of the Kuandu region, including the hot spring culture of the Beitou area.
SITUATE / 1 September to 26 November 2018 at Eastside International Los Angeles, United States of America
Phebe Schmidt is the recipient of the 2018 studio residency award at Eastside International Los Angeles (ESXLA). Phebe will undertake a three-month studio residency at ESXLA, located in the Brewery art colony complex in Lincoln Heights, Los Angeles. This award has been generously supported by Eastside International Los Angeles.
SITUATE / 3 September to 2 December 2018
SPARE ROOM / 2019
Madeleine Thornton-Smith is the recipient of the 2018 studio residency award at the RMIT SITUATE studios in Melbourne. Madeleine's residency will conclude with a solo exhibition at RMIT’s SPARE ROOM gallery in 2019.
