Exhibitions
Please check out our GPG Exhibition Archive page to see all 2023 exhibition documentation
2024 marks the 50th year anniversary of the George Paton Gallery. We will keep you posted as to the major celebrations we have in store in second semester to mark this momentous year.
FIRST SEMESTER PROGRAM
19 February to 1 March
EXHIBITION EVENT: 5-7pm Thursday 22 February
FRONT GALLERY
UMSU Art Collection: New Acquisitions and selected works
Curated by Channon Goodwin with Ellie Thomas
Each year the UMSU Art Collection supports University of Melbourne student artists by acquiring new artworks via commissions and graduate exhibitions for display in UMSU’s public spaces. To date there are 188 works on catalogue. This year we are showing our brand-new acquisitions and recently framed work, never seen before.
IMAGE: Grace Chandler, Laundry (Nunawading) detail. Oil on canvas, 2023
REAR GALLERY
Habitat
Hoi Ni Jess Chow, Emily Jung, Deborah O'Brien and Kyle Stanton
What does it mean to have the space to live, your needs met, the capacity to thrive? What happens in the spaces where those needs are in conflict, or equilibrium? Four artists find overlooked and unconventional notions of habitation and construct narratives to push those ideas into an imagined future.
IMAGE: Hoi Ni Jess Chow, Untitled. Watercolour paper, copper, plum resin, rose paddles, clay, gardening soil, terracotta, salt, gum arabic, vinegar. 2023
11-22 MARCH
Gallery event: Thursday 14 March 5-7pm
FRONT GALLERY
Endline
Images: Bri Hammond; Text and Research: Samuel Holleran and Hannah Gould
Endline honours people working in the deathcare sector, from nurses to funeral directors, and crematoria operators. It takes audiences into the ‘backstage’ of deathcare, a sector hidden from public view that has often been stigmatised. Portraits, and images of working environments, reveal death work to be an essential service and a practice of care.
IMAGE: Bri Hammond, Barry, grounds crew, Faulkner Cemetery. Digital photograph, 2022
REAR GALLERY
Sincere Affection
Lewis Egan and Lana Knezevic
Sincere Affection asks how commercialism, advertising, and product marketing manifest in our minds and bodies. Through video works and temporary tattoos, the exhibition offers a parallel take on the rat race towards mastering false ideas of composure, gesture, grace, and poise that mass product markets sell to us.
IMAGE: Lewis Egan, Dreams from Untitled Character. Video still, 2023
8-19 APRIL
Gallery event: 5-7pm Thursday 11 April
FRONT GALLERY
Revolution: Crosspoint of Power of 45-65
Patriot Mukmin
This exhibition is the initial stage of my research, which examines what happened in Indonesia in 1965-66, where a tragedy occurred that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. By examining what happened in the previous period (1945-65), I aim to understand the social background and dynamics and provide an objective view. This exhibition presents my response to the literature and archives I discovered in that preliminary investigation.
IMAGE: Patriot Mukmin, The Deterring Window #1 (detail). Collages and woven photographs, 2023
REAR GALLERY
HOT HARD RUBBISH
Angus Della Bosca, Bailey Florence, Rachelle Koumouris, Marika Robertson, Hari Sinh and Jevons Wang
Curated by Jevons Wang
Hot Hard Rubbish is an exhibition about finding new meaning in what is typically neglected. Through the metaphor of scouring streets for discarded curbside rubbish, this exhibition explores what it means to reclaim and reappropriate, revealing resilience and hidden desires within the overlooked urban remnants of our society.
IMAGE: Jevons Wang, Ergonomic Chair #1 & #2. Found objects, concrete and metal screws, 2023
29 APRIL-10 MAY
Gallery event: 5-7pm Thursday 2 May
FRONT GALLERY
(de)compositions
rochelle morris
(de)compositions consists of ephemeral ecological assemblages that convey interconnectivity. I create paintings, sculptures and drawings with plant matter that entangles with non-human and human matter. Matter that is compostable and matter that reveals my contamination with capitalist, colonial systems. The plant matter within the artworks: pollinate, eat away at, gestate, inform, decompose and intra-act with their surroundings.
IMAGE: rochelle morris, portrait of poppy. 5th september 2023
wayut (Woiwurrung), mallee (Woiwurrung), brachysome multifida, karawun (Woiwurrung), ban (Gunaikurnai), buffalo grass, conostylus, leek, potato, marigold, onion, cornflower, spinach, mustard greens, lemon zest, weeds, camellia japonica, autumn leaves, poppies, nasturtium, thyme, rosemary, snapdragon, calendula, dirt, bitumen, on mesh and chicken wire, 2023
REAR GALLERY
Late Yellow
Keira Davis, Mia Quinn, Mary Shaw and Jack Snow-Viener
This show is about the unstable ground between idea and articulation.
‘Colour’ is an articulation of a silent phenomenon. To label a colour ‘yellow’ is to deal in prior knowledge, hoping that understanding will percolate through this inadequate language.
Cool yellow, warm yellow, heavy yellow, tender yellow - it's sinking teeth into a meatless carcass.
IMAGE: Jack Snow-Viener, Till There was You (detail). Photograph 1 from series of 6. 2023
20-31 MAY
Gallery event: 5-7pm Thursday 23 May
FRONT GALLERY
The Living Room
Laura Smith
The Living Room is a manifesto on dreaming speculative narratives and rituals through cultural memory and (re)imagination. Our cultural ecologies are a mashup, a web of richly entangled and interdependent unfolding stories. Through embodied objects, projections, and illustrations, you are invited to meditate on what it is to be human in a post-human time.
IMAGE: Laura Smith, The Living Room: A Ritual (detail)
Ceramics and video projection, 2023. Documentation by Tracey Lee Hayes
REAR GALLERY
A croissant tray is only a croissant tray until you look a third time
Hoi Ni Jess Chow, Freja Innes-Ker and Mikaela McBain
How do you look at your everyday life? How do you take notice of colours, shapes and materials around you? We want to encourage you in this exhibition to re-explore your surroundings. To give examples of how you could look at things past their perceived functions. A practice in looking.
IMAGE: Freja Innes-Ker, Untitled. Photo taken on iPhone8, 2023