Beyond the Veil
Anastasia Booth, Tess King, Josh Hook, Hernan Lopera, Daniel Gawronski, Cristal Johnson, Paulina Hupe, Guy Grabowsky, Diego Ramirez, Britt Salt, Michele Sierra, Jake Treacy, Jessica Alice
30 May–16 Jun 2018
Beyond The Veil sought to expand and transform the perceptions, traditions and experiences of the white cube as an exhibition model. Through architectural interventions, site specific responses, public programs, newly commissioned works as well as renewed curatorial vision upon existing works, 12 contemporary artists altogether conjure a liminal experience within Blindside.
Calling upon all that is unseen, peripheral, veiled and at the threshold of our collective blind sides, Beyond The Veil constructs and chances ambiguous moments often encountered within ceremonial and daily ritual, performing the numinous quality of art. When in a liminal state one is considered in flux – neither here nor there, yet betwixt and between – and so the gallery space becomes a fertile place for transformation.
As one enters Blindside they were greeted with their mirror self; a ghost sculpture collapses upon itself; a monumental wall becomes a gateway between interior and exterior worlds; punctured vessels carry and seep energy from other times and places; the contemporary figure of the witch demolishes and rebuilds gender hierarchies; a corner of reflective discs perpetually shifts architecture; Jungian archetypes glow, smoke and smoulder; and a live eclipse interrogates colonial forecasts. All the while the internal structure of the gallery becomes a haunting acoustic, where a spirit box channels voices beyond the walls.
Beyond The Veil sought to expand and transform the perceptions, traditions and experiences of the white cube as an exhibition model. Through architectural interventions, site specific responses, public programs, newly commissioned works as well as renewed curatorial vision upon existing works, 12 contemporary artists altogether conjure a liminal experience within Blindside.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Anastasia Booth is a contemporary artist whose work teases art’s erotic potential, particularly as fragmented or flawed substitute. In a world that tightly controls acceptable feminine desire, she tackles preconceptions of female sexual aberration in cultural production, mythology and symbolic discourses. Drawing on a lexicon of fetishism and art history, she employs strategies of mimicry, subversive labour and embodiment to explore how the artist operating as an agent and a sexed subject can destabilise passive constraints, aligning these provocations with contemporary notions of power. Anastasia’s practice is marked but not limited to a particular interest in the procedures of sculpture and performance as ways of manifesting erotic forms sensuous yet abstracted, in order to tease the slippage between expectations of the real and desirous simulation. Booth’s aesthetic and theoretical inquiry into these fields led to the completion of a practice-led PhD at the Queensland University of Technology (2017). Her work has been exhibited nationally, and she also designs and delivers workshops, as well as public programs in museums and galleries.
Tess King is a Melbourne based artist who works predominantly with ceramics. She studied Fine Art at RMIT and graduated with First Class Honours in 2016. Tessy considers how meaning is generated through the arrangement of objects and materials in larger installations and playful vignettes.
Hernan LoperaHernán Lopera is a Colombian artist based in Melbourne.
Daniel Gawronski is an Australian artist and digital designer. He expresses himself through many creative avenues that evolve with time, interactions with people and nature, daily challenges and experiences and access to new technologies. He is passionate about drawing, painting, photography and electronic music and enjoys experimenting with these mediums. Primary themes in his work include exploring the nature of all things and understanding how we exist and connect with each other within this world and beyond. From an early age he has continued to study art and design.
Cristal Johnson lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria. She has recently completed her Bachelor of Fine Art finishing with First Class Honours in 2016 at RMIT University. Johnson has exhibited at various galleries including: The Substation (AUS), First Site Gallery (AUS), Deakin University Geelong Campus (AUS) and Takt (GER).
Paulina Hupe is a South American interdisciplinary artist. With a performance-based work, she explores various mediums such as photography, installation, sculpture and sound. My main subject of research is the effects of the colonial crossroads, with a focus on religious and spiritual practices from the Indigenous-Afro-Brazilian diaspora, European Paganism and Spiritism.
Guy Grabowsky is a Melbourne-based artist working with analogue photography. Grabowsky’s interest lies in the photographic medium – all aspects of its evolvement, its role in our shifting realities, how it ‘looks’ at us and how we perceive its usefulness. Grabowsky creates photographic prints with and without the camera, also utilising scanners with unconventional and traditional analogue/digital techniques.
Guy graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts (2017) and BA Fine Art Honours (2018). Guy has participated in a number of group and solo exhibitions throughout Melbourne and has been a recipient of a number of prizes, including the Plumm Wine Glass awards (2018), Mount Buller Residency (2017) and the Fiona Myer Award (2017).
Diego RamirezDiego Ramírez is a Mexican/Australian artist working with digital media, including video, light boxes and prints. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico he relocated to Melbourne, Australia in 2008.
Britt Salt's practice is an ongoing spatial experiment where fundamental elements such as line, form and space intertwine. Employing repetition and materials that have an inherent ability to create movement, her work centres on the symbiosis of art and architectural practice and questions how these genres influence the notion of place and impermanence in contemporary urban environments.
Britt received the Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Artists in 2010, which supported residencies in the U.K., France and China. In 2015 she undertook a residency in Tokyo, which culminated in a public installation at Youkobo Art Space. Her work has been selected as a finalist in numerous awards including the Paramor Prize 2017 and Gold Coast Art Award 2015. Most recently Britt has completed residencies at Arteles (Finland), Heima (Iceland) and the Australian Tapestry Workshop. She has worked on significant large-scale commissioned artworks for Fender Katsalidis Architects, Büro North and Asia Pacific Airports Melbourne.
Jake Treacy is a curator, writer and poet whose practice employs numinous acts through exhibition-making, performativity, and the spoken and written word. They acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded upon the Kulin Nations land from which they work, and pay their respects to Elders past, present and future across all First Nations. They are a University of Melbourne graduate with a Master of Art Curatorship (2017) and Postgraduate Art History (2013) who has previously co-directed an artist-run initiative, sat on grant advisory panels, and written published copy on numerous contemporary arts practices. Their recent thesis examines ways of constructing liminal experiences in order to incur healing, promoting inclusivity and community, and exercising the therapy of art. Their recent projects include Pearlescent Verse (Human Rights Arts and Film Festival), Apocalyptic Horse (Heide Museum), Utopian Tongues (Seventh Gallery), and Beyond the Veil (Blindside Gallery).
Jessica Alice is a poet, critic, broadcaster and artistic director/CEO from Melbourne’s west living on Kaurna country in Adelaide, South Australia.
Jake Treacy is a curator, writer and poet whose practice employs numinous acts through exhibition-making, performativity, and the spoken and written word. They acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded upon the Kulin Nations land from which they work, and pay their respects to Elders past, present and future across all First Nations. They are a University of Melbourne graduate with a Master of Art Curatorship (2017) and Postgraduate Art History (2013) who has previously co-directed an artist-run initiative, sat on grant advisory panels, and written published copy on numerous contemporary arts practices. Their recent thesis examines ways of constructing liminal experiences in order to incur healing, promoting inclusivity and community, and exercising the therapy of art. Their recent projects include Pearlescent Verse (Human Rights Arts and Film Festival), Apocalyptic Horse (Heide Museum), Utopian Tongues (Seventh Gallery), and Beyond the Veil (Blindside Gallery).
Thursday 31 May, 6pm–8pm: Opening + Performance by Josh Hook + Ritual by Paulina Hupe
On this night Josh Hook's performance and a Paulina Hupe's ritual pierced and punctured the veils between worlds.
Josh Hook | The Perfect Wall, as an architectural intervention, demonstrates the ritual of setting up an ideal blank canvas from which to work, the destruction and break down that can occur, and the eventual rebuilding to begin again. Taking a hammer to puncture the wall, Hook actions the conversation between interior and exterior worlds, underscoring the gallery as a perpetual construction site.
Paulina Hupe | RTU is an intimate, ritualistic performance covering the faces of past and future, drawing upon the present. In this work the female body is a vessel of transcendence, an archetypical carrier for potential and transformation where nature’s Magick lives and dies.
Saturday 9 June, 2pm: Walking Floor Talk
Participants met curator Jake Treacy at the Melbourne General Cemetery Elvis Monument and walked through Melbourne to Blindside.
Part lecture, part manifesto, part thesis, part happening, part demonstration, part action - this talk aimed to take art to the streets, bridging it from the gallery, where it may be accessed by all. As part of the exhibition Beyond the Veil, it sought to formulate discourse around art as an everyday therapy, as a tool that we may use to manifest better versions of ourselves. Throughout the public program, a sculpture will be processioned, articulating the numinous quality of art beyond the gallery.
