Victorian College of the Arts - Research Publications

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    Self Care Action
    Just, K (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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    How I Will Change
    Just, K (RMIT University, 2018)
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    Declaration
    Just, K ; Brugheria, T ; Tompkins, B (Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), 2018)
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    This Wild Song
    Just, K ; Khamara, J ; Coppersmith, Y ; Nelson, I ; Trevethan, M ; Berg, K ; Bertram, H ; Chappell, D ; Evans, M ; Fox, B ; Gartside, H ; Gofton, E ; Harmer, M ; Lindsay, E ; Papaetrou, P ; Rabbit, C ; Rohde, K ; Snaith, T ; Stockdale, J ; Wirth, S ; Wlodarczak, G (Atrium Gallery, Australian High Commission, 2018)
    The exhibition This Wild Song was a survey of contemporary artworks by 21 significant Australian female artists to Singapore and will be presented at the Australian High Commission. The exhibition was timed to coincide with International Women’s Day in March of 2018.
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    Needleman Feminist Fan
    Just, K ; Brain, R ; Klerks, L (Chapter House Lane Gallery, 2018)
    Needleman, Feminist Fan is an exhibition of the work of Kate Just and Robert Brain, two artists exploring the political potential of weaving and needlework. It explored the ways that artistic practice, gender, sexuality, and art history overlap within both artist’s practices. Robert Brain’s tapestries comprise a range of influences that comment on his personal experiences, dreams and desires. By borrowing from art history and informed by gender politics, Brain creates works layered with humour and unexpected juxtapositions. Similarly, the hand knitted works of Kate Just present a selection of portraits of celebrated feminist artists in a laboured act of devotion and self-portraiture. The series title, Feminist Fan, emphasises Just’s reverence of each of these artists and to feminism, furthered by an accompanying fan letter shared via social media with the hashtag #feministfan.
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    Unfinished Business: Perspectives on art and feminism
    Just, K ; Daw, K ; Gower, E (Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2017)
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    Can't touch this
    Clarke, A ; King, S ; Leach, A ; Van Acker, W (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2019-01-01)
    Kate Just also considers power and labour, but in a very different way. Her 2011–2013 work is a response to the history of the Palaeolithic Venus of Willendorf figurine, and it spells out ‘Venus’ in large cardboard letters across the gallery floor. Each letter is encased in fabric that has been knitted by Just and 55 other women. Made from tough jute string, the fabric is not just decorative. It also seems to shape and contain the letters, but the relationship is not made entirely clear. The tension here comes from thinking about what would happen to the cardboard letters, and the language and power structures they represent, if the network made by the women was removed. Total collapse? A tilt? Nothing at all?
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    The Public Body .2
    Just, K (Art Space, 2017)
    The second exhibition in a three-part speculation on one idea, this year THE PUBLIC BODY .02 brings together the work of over forty artists and collectives from the 1970s to the present, integrating the archival and the contemporary to draw connections between works across decades. Extending on THE PUBLIC BODY .01’s exploration of contemporary representations of the body and, in particular, the naked and/or sexualised body, the second iteration delves further back to highlight a range of practices embedded in feminist, queer and anti-racist subjectivities. The exhibition includes new works alongside key contributions from renowned artists whose practices have been central to contemporary art’s consideration of the body as agent and instrument. In THE PUBLIC BODY .02 bodies are displaced, contaminated, insatiable and vulnerable; attempting to function within the constraints of the flesh and challenging its limits through a performative refrain. Bodies are both witnessed and witnessing. Some take refuge in the safety and power of distinct communities and networks, while others struggle to free themselves from the dictates of systems that reduce and subjugate.
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    No Woman is an Island
    JUST, K (Blindside Gallery, 2017)
    No Woman is an Island is an ambitious group exhibition of Australian artists that focuses on female experience through the conceptual framework of the ‘female gaze’. Through the eyes of women artists, the exhibition explores the shift in perception that comes with different ages and phases of life. The artists engage diverse practices to touch on a an array of relationships to womanhood and also explore the theme of woman as Object vs Subject – thereby challenging, complicating, and confronting the traditional notion of a ‘male gaze’ in art.
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    Victorian Craft Award
    Just, KE (Craft, 2017)
    The Victorian Craft Awards, presented by Craft Victoria, is Victoria’s largest biennial exhibition of craft artists, showcasing excellence and innovation across all mediums.