GPG Exhibition Program
The George Paton Gallery is now located in our new space on level 1 in the Arts and Culture Building (Building 159) on Monash Road at the University of Melbourne Parkville campus.
SECOND SEMESTER PROGRAM
14-21 SEPTEMBER
EXHIBITION CELEBRATION: 5-7pm Thursday 15 September
Please note that this exhibition will now close a day earlier due to Thursday 22 Public Holiday
3-14 OCTOBER
CLOSING EVENT: 5-7pm Thursday 13 October
Radical Self Care and Sustainable Artmaking
Zahraa Alkahtani, Helvi Apted, Jasmine Brooks,Stephanie Hicks, Rebecca Jones, Kate Just, Sorcha Mackenzie, Fiona Martin, Jacinta Maude, Linda Studena, Samantha Thompson, Michelle Tonkin and Doug Webb
Coordinated by Kate Just
Radical Self Care and Sustainable Artmaking is a collaborative exhibition between teacher and feminist artist Kate Just and Master of Contemporary Art students at the Victorian College of the Arts. The exhibition works from two prompts (1) a poster by Sister Corita Kent, a feminist nun, printmaker and political activist, which espouses a set of rules for making art and (2) the quote by feminist writer Audre Lorde ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.’
Sharing discussion, discourse, collaborative making and readings, and then working together to formulate art in response, teacher and students privilege self care and sustainable approaches to art making in a neoliberal world.
IMAGE
Sister Corita Kent, Immaculate College Rules for Making Art, 1967 - 1968
Digital poster
24 OCTOBER to 4 NOVEMBER
CLOSING EVENT: Thursday 3 November
ENTRANCE GALLERY
Quakes in Mind
Char Lee
Quakes in Mind explores human reactions to living with frequent earthquakes in Aotearoa, New Zealand. While taking measures to protect the impermanent structural world, we trivialise the psychological toll of living with the threat of ruin. Gambling on the next disaster has become a game – depersonalising destruction.
IMAGE
Char Lee, They told us to get under the tables. Found objects and acrylic on cotton fabric, 2022
MAIN GALLERY
Embrace Me You Child
Benita Beveridge, Allie Currie, Stacey Collee, Alex Fredriksson, Raisa Mclean, Juliet Phraser, Daniel Jumpertz, Tom Retallack, Shannon Syme
Curated by Juliet Phraser
Embrace Me You Child invites artists to respond to the lyrics of Carly Simon's 1972 song of the same title. Engaging in collective self-analysis and play, we ask how do you embrace your inner child and navigate the world with sensitivity to co-existing parallel selves?
IMAGE
Daniel Jumpertz, Eloise. Large format digital inkjet print on archival paper, 2022
14-25 NOVEMBER
OPENING EVENT: 5-7pm Thursday 17 November
Practice
Andrew Seward
I also make artworks to learn things. To learn how to do something; or from or about something; or what happens if I do something; or what happens if I let something happen. And sometimes, to learn some more about those things if I then do something else. Like have an exhibition, for instance.
IMAGE
Andrew Seward, Strelitzia. Pencil on paper, 2021
PAST EXHIBITIONS
GPG PROGRAM SEMESTER ONE 2022
23 February to 4 March
Documenting Space
Gabrielle Bergman, Ellyn Faye, Jack Murray and Anna Steele
Curated by Gabrielle Bergman
Documenting Space provides an examination of both the physical and historical conditions of the George Paton Gallery within the context of its location at Union House. It will exhibit work from an artist, an architect, and an interior designer, all of which have a unique and sensitive approach to the observation, documentation, design, and intervention within spatial environments.
Upload exhibition catalogue here
9-18 March
ENTRANCE GALLERY
Archive in Play
Linda Studena
Linda Studena experiments with photography, print, drawing and assemblage to explore the symbology of common objects, based on her interest in the socio-political dimensions of personal, historical and living archives. Archive in Play presents a series of works using methods of recording, erasure, and disruption that generate new associations of place, memory and time.
IMAGE Linda Studena, Cross Section Cabbage. Oil paint on ceramic, 2021
MAIN GALLERY
Domesticated
Bella Froebel, Ebony Hoiberg, Emily King, Maddie Mo, and Caitlin Aloisio Shearer
Curated by Steph Markerink
Domesticated is a multi-disciplinary group exhibition which playfully explores intersections between domesticity and feminism. The exhibition examines the politics and emotion of domestic spaces, represents contemporary uses of traditional ‘feminine’ crafts, and touches on the history of the George Paton Gallery as a hub for feminist artists in the 70’s.
IMAGE Bella Froebel, Underneath. Digital photograph, 2018
23 March to 1 April
ENTRANCE GALLERY
Bread Cake
Siro Cavaiuolo
The worst thing that can happen to a cake is to find a hair in it. What do you get when you overknead dough? Bread Cake is a search for structure in non-rational semantics, pushing quiet domestic transgressions to absurd conclusions.
IMAGE Siro Cavaiuolo, Bread Cake. Digital photograph, 2021
MAIN GALLERY
oiled and covered and never mentioned
Skye Malu Baker, Cade Burgess, Wandi Cao, and Claudia Saballa Hobbs
Curated by Cade Burgess
Exhibition catalogue here
Four artists develop their exploration of shame and feminism established in 2021 virtual exhibition ERINYS, alongside guest artist Claudia Saballa. oiled and covered and never mentioned presents multidisciplinary artwork in response to PRAWNS DE JO, a poem by Selima Hill.
IMAGE Wandi Cao, Room 1616. Photograph, 2021
6-14 April
ENTRANCE GALLERY
A Geography of Moments
Christina Darras
Every day I wake up around 3 am. I crack open a chocolate bar for breakfast, and as I tare the foil, the day starts. A person in transition looks for a safe place to be. It takes time to feel at home. However, rituals create familiarity. I rescue the foils because they represent this moment of safety and calm and place them on the wall as a memory of the day. They create a map, a geography of moments. The silver shine reflects the value of every moment, and the foil’s fragility represents the absurdity of safety.
IMAGE Christina Darras, A Geography of Moments. Rescued chocolate foils, 2021
MAIN GALLERY
The Fold
Lily Baxter, Eliza Cullen, Lauren Johnston, Ellie Murtagh, Liana Prosia, Lilly Skipper, Madelaine Sloane, Shelley Spangler
Curated by Lilly Skipper
Artists negotiate the motivating forces that drive and decompose movement and flexions. This elastic force of the body and material alike, is determined in hardness and fluidity. Comparatively, works consider the finite body to the infinities of material through the cohering, unifying parts forming the tunic of The Fold.
Please click here for exhibition catalogue
IMAGE Lily Baxter, Eliza Cullen, Lauren Johnston, Ellie Murtagh, Liana Prosia, Lilly Skipper, Madelaine Sloane, Shelley Spangler, The Fold. Digital photograph, 2021
27 April to 6 May
ENTRANCE GALLERY
SIGNS
Alice Edy
Link to video documentation of project
BELOVED is both a durational performance piece and an archive of found text. Using frottage (the practice of rubbing graphite on paper across a textured surface), the word “beloved” has been taken from hundreds of gravestones in the Melbourne General Cemetery. This piece began during the first prolonged lockdown in Victoria last year, as part of my (Unofficial) Artist Residency at the MGC. When walking the grounds, I was struck by how this word is – by far – the most repeated descriptor in the epitaphs.
The work operates at the intersection of the Concrete Poetic and the performative, expanding on my practice by exploring notions of touch, time, ritual and labour with regards to text. The process was originally informed by my background in hand-lettering; before photography, typographers used frottage as a common method of “lifting” different letterforms from signage when they travelled. Here, the performance of collecting text seeks to complicate the binaries of authorship and plagiarism. The physical gesture is part of a long genealogy of expressive mark-making, however it is also a deeply uncreative act; stealing the word/image from the surface below.
This archive is a work in progress (currently consisting of over 400 rubbings). The collection constitutes an experiment in writing a book with only one word.
Click on the videos below to view:
Beloved 1
Beloved 2
Beloved 3
MAIN GALLERY
Venus in Tullamarine
Nicholas Currie, Cat Lawrance, and Katie Paine
Curator, Cameron Hurst
Catalogue editor, Jeremy George
Plus Venus in Tullamarine Symposium convened by: Jeremy George & Cameron Hurst with speakers Professor Ian McLean, Cameron Hurst, Ursula Cornelia de Leeuw and Jeremy George
Friday 6 May 1-5pm
Link to symposium booking here
Famed for the outlandish classic The Magic Pudding, the legacy of Norman Lindsay — anti-modernist, author, libertine and, most importantly, artist — continues to cast a long, shifting shadow over Australian art and cultural history. In Venus in Tullamarine, key works from the University’s Lindsay collection are exhibited alongside responses from student artists. For a new generation of art historians and artists looking at 20th century Australian art, who is Norman Lindsay?
IMAGE Norman Lindsay, Untitled – (the Procession), detail. Lithograph, 27.9cm x 40.2cm. University of Melbourne Art Collection. Courtesy of A., C. and H. Glad, c. 1900
16-27 May 2022
MAIN GALLERY: When you think about feminism, what do you think?
George Paton Gallery: Feminisms 1975-2022
Curated by Emma Shaw and Sandra Bridie
ENTRANCE GALLERY:
Women's Art Register, setting up shop in the GPG
Coordinated by Caroline Phillips, Women’s Art Register
Click image above to view short video of opening of When you think about feminism, our last exhibition in the historic George Paton Gallery. Documentation by Astrid Mulder, May 2022
In 1975, the George Paton Gallery sent out a call for responses to the question, When you think about art what do you think? In celebration of Kiffy Rubbo and Meredith Roger's 'ideas shows' and the GPG's long association with the Women's Art Movement, GPG: Feminisms 1975-2022 looks at the history of feminist engagement in the activities of the George Paton Gallery from the 1970s to today. The exhibition reviews the nature of the various feminisms that have emerged over the past 50 years and where they sit in today’s climate.
By opening a call for responses to the question, When you think about feminism, what do you think? this exhibition seeks to engage these conversations in a democratic, inclusive way that has not always been the hallmark of feminist history. The exhibition’s goal has been to encourage a diverse array of voices and responses, demonstrating the plurality of contemporary feminisms rather than imposing a singular narrative. Consequently, the artworks on display represent the artists’ individual responses, rather than the curators’ overarching views, and we encourage you to consider and discuss your own reactions to the work and to the question, When you think about feminism, what do you think?
Link to exhibition gallery sheet with all artist's works listed
IMAGE
TOP Lucy Lippard visits the GPG, July 1975
Photo by Sue Ford, George Paton Gallery Collection, University of Melbourne archives
ENTRANCE GALLERY
Women's Art Register: Setting up shop in the GPG
Following a series of women-only exhibitions and meetings at the Ewing (now George Paton) Gallery in 1974 and 1975, Director Kiffy Rubbo and Co-Director Meredith Rogers met with artists Lesley Dumbrell and Erica McGilchrist, to discuss setting up an archive of women’s art. Amidst the energy and activism of that International Women’s Year, the group put a call-out to contemporary women artists to each submit two slides of their work. They quickly received 160 slides - shown at a screening in September that year - and in short order the Women’s Art Register was born.
Their aim was to address a stunning lack of women artists represented in educational materials and across the canon of art history. It also quickly became an active (and activist) community that provides opportunities and a supportive peer network for otherwise marginalised artists. The initial collection was housed and administered at the George Paton Gallery until 1979, when it was relocated to the Carringbush (now Richmond) Library - a valuable relationship brokered by Anna Sande - where it still lives today. The Women’s Art Register is now the longest running, artist-run archive of women’s art practice in the world and is designated a Collection of National Significance.
Since its inception the Women’s Art Register has compiled educational kits for use in schools and libraries throughout Australia. Over the decades, this grassroots, living community of contemporary artists has undertaken research, published a bi-annual magazine (The Women’s Art Register Bulletin), and produced a number of major exhibitions and projects to educate and inform broad audiences, support its community of members, and advocate for women’s art and artists. We now reinhabit this site to collaborate with George Paton Gallery once more for this historic Feminisms exhibition. We have temporarily set up shop, continuing our work of archiving works from the past and the present, sharing the narratives and images of thousands of women artists, and amplifying their voices.
Link to exhibition room sheet
IMAGES
1978 WAR logo designed by Erica McGilchrist
Volunteers Leia Alex and Patsy Brown, working in the Women’s Art Register archive, 2020
Photo by Caroline Phillips
Monash University student viewing WAR slide kit, 2018
Photo by Caroline Phillips
18-29 JULY
ENTRANCE GALLERY
A pocket for my pencil
Tara Denny
Unbound me.
You found me
Two hundred years later
Writing on scraps of my leather sleeve
Creating an envelope sleeve fo you to believe
An opening, a letter
Scratching in words of
love,
sex
&
jealousy-
for it never goes out of fashion all that easily.
Tradition may sway in freshwater pearls
so, let me write... Dear Emily.
IMAGE
Tara Denny, Nothing is Gorgeous. Leather, rivets, photo album, 2022
MAIN GALLERY
Traces
Alice Tsiavos
Alice is the 2021 recipient of the GPG VCA Graduate residency award
Traces are residual; whether in the form of an object, anecdote, or mark found on the floor, each trace holds the quiet presence of past moments. After 47 years in the historic Union House, the George Paton is relocating. Through an exploration of traces found in the old gallery, this exhibition reflects upon a transitory moment in the Paton’s history.
IMAGE
Alice Tsiavos, Impression #1 (detail). Embossed lithograph, 2022
8-19 AUGUST
ENTRANCE GALLERY
Mohini Mehta
Invasion
Invasion is a series of work depicting the relationship between humans and the environment. Living at a time with constant struggle to find alternatives, these series of work try to bridge the gap of understanding. The works here should invoke a voice within the viewers to bring about a change..
IMAGE
Mohini Mehta, Convergence. Indian spices and fruit juices on canvas, 2019
MAIN GALLERY
post;
Gaia Del Santo, Jasmine Jafari, Lauren Nevard and Remy Spanos
Curated by Jasmine Jafari and Lauren Nevard
DOIEXISTIFIDONTPOST??
OVER OVER consumption p0st— - - - d1g1t4l w0rld,,,>> sunny nihilism on a daily ####(((( @@,,,,digital
materiality i guess, no c0nc3pt, i guess$$$$. can you gu3ss? Nvm….(_….,,<<<?/////(((((,.,././,.//,
where is legitness in digital space?!?!?!?????
Jasmine Jafari: @101262619artchive | Lauren Nevard: @rennonline
Gaia Del Santo: @3i3gaia3i3 | Remy Spanos: @remyspanos
IMAGE
Gaia Del Santo, Jasmine Jafari, Lauren Nevard and Remy Spanos, post; Ink, oil pastel, stickers on cartridge, 2022
29 AUGUST to 9 SEPTEMBER
ENTRANCE GALLERY
Daniel Greenham
Pursuit
Technology mediates our tenuous relationship with the real through a complex system of signs and symbols. Pursuit severs this connection and asks what remains when the mediator outlives the mediated—with vivid and complex phenomena emerging from the stochastic composition of simple mathematical formulae.
IMAGE: Daniel Greenham, Untitled. Digital image, 2022
MAIN GALLERY
Stephanie Hicks
The Indeterminacy of Encounter
Embracing ways of knowing and making which are tentacular and open-ended, ‘The Indeterminacy of Encounter’ explores the potential for new ways of being and becoming which are both generous and generative. It is informed by an understanding of ecological symbiosis and entangled with questions of connection, care and responsibility, and a deep love of the natural world.
IMAGE
Stephanie Hicks, Flow No 2 (detail), 2022
Paper rope, wooden stools, masking tape and stick
Photo credit: Astrid Mulder
Tastings Takeover
Kalpesha Barkar, Celine Chai, Frankey Chung-Kok-Lun, Seyed Farid and Fazel Mojtahedi, Rebecca Jones and Fiona Martin, Jacinta Maude, Juliana Neild, Mabel Ng, Ghazel Ronagh, Jocelyn Saunders, Samantha Thompson
Tastings is an opportunity for current students to develop new creative works, learn new skills, and collaborate with a tightknit team of peers.
With an emphasis on revitalisation, renewal and reimagination of the arts, Tastings supports students to develop creative works in a variety of artforms and mediums including theatrical productions and performances, dance, exhibitions, films and more!
Tastings artists will develop a range of production skills and art making strategies that will travel with them in into future projects and plant the seeds for new works that can be fully realised after Tastings.
Tastings Takeover supports visual artists, curators, and interdisciplinary practitioners to experiment with ideas and methods of display within the new George Paton Gallery (GPG) and Arts Lab, located in the new Student Precinct.