Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications
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ItemX (for Kate)(Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne, 2022-08-04)X (2022) was a site-specific work that considered the nature of colour, representation, and the limits of minimalist affect. A monochrome (yellow) chalk drawing, X was conceived as a memorial artwork in remembrance of late colleague Kate Daw. “X” is a kiss. “X” marks the spot. “X” is also an end. X (2022) extended upon the legacies of Mimimalism to consider representational and affective experience. A monochrome of bright yellow chalk covering the entirety of a salon-style gallery wall, the colour was the same bright sun-yellow as a gifted cashmere jumper. It was also a colour Kate would wear. The density of the chalk pigment presented a kind of visual absorption. As an affective experience, and through metaphor, X (2022) innovatively and sympathetically presented an artwork of affective memorialisation. X (2022) was created for the exhibition “Love, work (for KD)” held at Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne. The exhibition was a tribute exhibition for the artist and academic Kate Daw (1965-2020), who was the Head of Art, VCA, School of Fine Art at the University of Melbourne when she passed. She was a close colleague and friend. A vastly popular and influential figure, the exhibition “Love, work (for KD)” was notably well attended by artists, academics and industry figures. The experience of attendees, including critic Amelia Winata (winnyyoyo on Instagram) were frequently shared on social media, often featuring the artwork X (2022).
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ItemNo Preview AvailableSelf Care Action(Beechworth Contemporary Art Award, 2022-09-15)Self Care Action is an ongoing series of 20 hand-knitted panels bearing texts relating to self-care. The project explores how self-care has its roots in radical activism. As a term, it dates to the US based civil rights and women’s rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Each work operates a simple reminder that I consider crucial for my own emotional survival and resilience. It is also an invitation to others to imagine how they might prioritise caring for themselves and the personal and political implications of self care, particularly for women. The knitted Self Care Action panels are all the same size. They are brightly coloured and deploy the same rounded font. These simple design elements underscore the optimism of the project and the clarity of the actions. Actions from the series include: Ask for help, Stay Present, Switch Off Your Phone, Love Yourself, Make Art, Get Into Nature, Feel Your Feelings, Get Therapy, and Say No. The works were shared on Instagram via @katejustknits and using the #katejustselfcareaction with images of each work, pictures of me holding each sign up, and text about each self-care prompt. The work considers how in a political climate in which women's rights are being challenged and threatened, war is being waged around the globe, and a pandemic is unfolding, how art and conversation around self care can provide a mode of resistance and resilience. The fact that the works are knitting further amplifies the potential to use craft as a medium to explore and cultivate ideas of care. The Beechworth Contemporary Art Award was a competitive award in which only ten finalists were selected, attesting to the works significance. Knitting events held during the presentation of this work at Beechworth were well attended by the public. Radio interview on 94.9 Maine FM shared the project more widely. The work will continue to be developed to a major presentation of 45 works at Linden Gallery in March 2023, and then be included in a curated exhibition of textile artists at Hugo Michell Gallery in July 2023. Interest from Shepparton Art Museum and Tamworth Textile Triennial further attest to the works' relvance at this time. The work was funded by an Australia Council Fellowship, a prestigious art award that goes to one visual artist in Australia each year.
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ItemTheorem(MEJIA Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, 2022-11-30)Theorem: an exhibition comprised of 11 figurative sculptures cast in plaster that shed light on series of philosophical propositions in the in work of philosopher Michel Serres,.entitled Statues: A Second Foundation. The sculpture exhibition gives a material form to a series of philosophical concerns regrading the origins of sculpture and the interconnections between sculpture as idol, as theological transgression in the 3 monotheistic religions of the book, as embodiment of death, and in recent scientific research. Through an aesthetic engagement with materials, abstract concepts are given a palpably tactile and visual form. Image of exhibition attached. A paper discussing the connection to philosophy of Herder on the liminality of sculpture in relation to my the exhibition, Theorem, was presented at the Australasian School of Continental Philosophy conference 28th - 30th Nov, 2022 by Professor Alexander Garcia Duttmann, Universitat de Kunst, Berlin. See Duttmann's paper attached and his Institutional affiliation.
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ItemKids Stay Free(Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, 2021)“Kids Stay Free” is an architectural ruin fantasy that is a contemporary reinterpretation of the historical capriccio genre.
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ItemSTILL NOW(Horsham Regional Art Gallery, 2021-05-29)Oceanic Feeling and Old School were paintings included in the curated exhibition STILL NOW held at the Horsham Regional Art Gallery.
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ItemEx Tropical(Bayside Arts and Cultural Centre, Melbourne, 2020)Ex Tropical is an example of a contemporary approach to making paintings about ruins that speculate about possible futures.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableLove and Insurrection(Blackbirds FC Melbourne, 2022)Love and Insurrection: Short film experimentations in the moving image with painting, photography, sonic and written compositions.
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ItemSaltwater City(StreetWORKS Hopkins Street Bridge Footscray and CEO foyer, 2020-07)Saltwater City: Experimentations in photography and moving image compositions on the industrial impact on waterways across a Melbourne bridge alongside research of climate and the sublime.
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ItemFISH ROE AKTIV(Geelong Gallery, 2022-04-01)This body of work builds on many and varied relationships between image and text in consumer culture, as popular in twentieth century art and design, and now. The work aims to express and expose qualities of language and jargon used to foster consumption of wellness and self-help industries. The visualisation and expression of image and text (as confused and distorted) in this work, question the purported functionality of such industries, aiming to expose and build upon its ubiquitous, but dysfunctional-capitalistic optimism. This work is a reinvention and rethinking of trends in contemporary language and words found in consumer cultures of wellness and health (especially those on social media). Of noticeable importance in this work is my oblique play with fish roe and seafood extender with an absurd alignment with luxe jewellery as a unique and ridiculous clarion call for the contemporary crisis in overfishing. The work presents the imaginative and sociological capacities of language and the aesthetics of text as important art and design currency for social inquiry and aesthetic / poetic play. FISH ROE AKTIV was shortlisted for and exhibited in the prestigious Geelong and Contemporary Art Prize, 2022, at Geelong Gallery.
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ItemYour choc-mint pelvik floor is SO boring(Linden New Art, Melbourne, 2022)Your Choc Mint Pelvik Floor Is SO Boring is a recent project that explores my self-made image and text inspired by cultures of consumption that anxiously and greedily gulp down elixirs and fixes of wellness, motivation, self-help and pumped up-fakery. Manifesting as forty gouache posters on paper and thirty ‘fake’ books painted on paper and wood, this exhibition also presents two paths to my practice: that of the humorous pun laden social satire in book format and the flatter more decorative fusion of text-based concepts that inform an abstracted, but graphically corporeal slip into dysfunction and almost psychedelic anxiety of image and text inspired by our hyperbolic consumer society. The two ways of creating in my practice are both outcomes of my own frantic overload of internal content as I, myself, greedily absorb and reflect on the languages and pursuits of wellness, self-help, motivation and consumption devotees, especially in a time of both ego and eco anxiety. Anna Hoyle