I Can't Stop Living Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by acclaimed Australian artist Anastasia Klose. Bringing together a new video with a site-specific wall drawing and a suite of drawings, Klose’s commingling of satirical, nostalgic and candid commentary imbued in video, sculptural work and a drawing practice, has a received critical acclaim throughout Australia. For her project in Gertrude Contemporary’s Front Gallery space, Klose says “I have tried to sum up my life somewhat and break it down into things that I love: family, pets and people. Just everyday love.” Klose will present a new video project entitled “Home Video” which is a compilation of footage of the artist filmed from 1989 to 2012, compirising home videos and a montage of older video projects with newer, observational studies. The work collages the staged and the scripted, alongside the authentic with the spontaeous. Klose sees “Home Video” as a mini-retrospective and the kind of filmic collage that might play through her mind in her final moments. The two accompanying music tracks operate to further push the work into self-reflexively sardonic territory. A second work charts the same period of the artist’s life as a series of drawings of cats. Some of the images she drew as a child and others she has more recently produced in lurid coloured pencil, where she attempts to detail the distinct personalities of each these animals. Other drawings are of images of lost cats found on the internet. Klose sees the drawings as part-homage to pets she has owned and part metaphor for fleeting company or ‘lost cats’.
ARTISTS: JESS JOHNSON, ANNA KRISTENSEN, TESSA ZETTEL AND KARL KHOE, THE SLOW ART COLLECTIVE AND MARCIN WOJCIK. CURATORS: MARCEL COOPER AND BRONWYN BAILEY-CHARTERIS
BELLOWING ECHOES 20.04.12 – 26.05.12
Bellowing Echoes takes a piece of Melbourne folklore and uses it as a provocation and a point of exchange between artists who draw on the personal, the political and the relational. The project forms part of the 2012 Next Wave Festival and Gertrude Contemporary’s Emerging Curators Program. Presented by Next Wave in partnership with Gertrude Contemporary, this program provides professional development opportunities for emerging curators, and supports emerging artists in the production, presentation and publication of new work in a significant public context. Involving a formal mentorship with staff at Gertrude Contemporary that covers both the conceptual and practical development of an ambitious exhibition for the Next Wave Festival, the Emerging Curator’s Program enables new artistic viewpoints and curatorial positions to be realised.
As impetus for the exhibition is the story of George Arden, who in 1838 longs for community. As the colony of Port Phillip emerges, Arden embarks on a quest to politicise, galvanise and reflect upon his new environment. Curators Cooper and Bailey-Charteris employ this avatar of the 1800s as a guide through a temporal wanderlust of immersive installation and process-orientated works. Bellowing Echoes combines uncovered fictional truths, the slumps of failure and those rare, poetic and precise moments of elated and genuine connection to the world around us as starting points for artistic exploration and collaboration
Anna Kristensen’s work for Bellowing Echoes, Indian Chamber is a 360-degree panoramic painting depicting the iconic Jenolan Caves. Subterranean-like and operating as an interior within the gallery’s interior, this closed space and extended vista amplifies the spirit of exploration that runs throughout the project. Marcin Wojik’s multi- disciplinary practice draws on a community of willing participants and collaborators. For Bellowing Echoes, Wojik presents a two-part project which documents his design of and first flight in a home-made glider.
Also featured in the exhibition is new work by Slow Art Collective (Tony Damas, Chaco Kato, Ash Keating and Dylan Martorell), Jess Johnson and Tessa Zettel and Karl Khoe. In addition to the exhibition, Bellowing Echoes also features a publication as well as a one night only live event.
The take-home limited edition publication entitled the 2012 Port Phillip Gazette is based on the original 1838 version by George Arden, the young entrepreneur and poet of early Melbourne. Working alongside designers Naasicaa Larsen and Geoff Riding from Copy Boy, the Newspaper is remade with stories that further the Bellowing Echoes’ futile, heroic, absurd and urgent responses of Australian communities to landscape. Released as three editions through the duration of the exhibition, the publication features work by Bindi Cole, The Holy Trinity Collective, Kirsty Hulm, Sam Icklow, Laith McGregor, Sonja Rumyantseva, Carl Scrase, Hanna Tai and Annie Wu. The 2012 gazette pays homage to Melbourne’s literary past and celebrates its current status as a UNESCO City of Literature.
Drawing upon theatrical and performative practices, the live event scheduled for Saturday 19 May 3-4:30pm, brings to life elements of both the exhibition and the publication. The afternoon invites a discussion of the intersections of art, literature, activism and performance. The event allows both the artists and audience the opportunity to further imagine new histories. Festival media contact: Annette Vieusseux, Next Wave Publicist: 0414 306 949 / media@nextwave.org.au
LAITH MCGREGOR 20.04.12 – 26.05.12
For his Studio 12 project, Laith McGregor intends to highlight and play on the bridge between the studio and the Studio 12 Exhibition Space.
Laith Mcgregor works within a multi-disciplinary practice including drawing, painting, video and sculpture. His work documents the grey area between fiction and non fiction. He questions the ambiguity that exists in our peripheral subconscious, the state of constant flux that is neither here nor there. It is this perpetual in between state that forms the basis for his work. A Sisyphean task of continual questioning.
McGregor has exhibited widely throughout Australia and overseas, most recently in 'Physical Video' Gallery of Modern Art Queensland, 'New Psychedelia' The University of Queensland Art Museum (2011) and 'Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing' Heide Museum of Art, Melbourne (2010). In 2011 he received a Arts Victoria Arts Development Grant, Australia Council Barcelona Residency and the Art and Australia/Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award. His work is held in institutions including Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Museum of Old and New Art, National Gallery of Victoria, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art Queensland, University of Queensland Art Museum and Monash University Museum of Art. http://laithmcgregor.blogspot.com/
