Project Spaces
The GPG Project Spaces provide opportunities for curatorial projects in alternative spaces. The program pushes for risk taking and experimentation and prioritises projects that address the public space of Union House, and its context within the University of Melbourne. Each exhibition runs for one month across all three alternative spaces, with a closing celebration the final Wednesday of the exhibition.
Please come and chat to us about your ideas! Contact David Attwood, Arts Projects Officer david.attwood@union.unimelb.edu.au
GPG PROJECT SPACES
Union House, The University of Melbourne
VITRINE | Ground floor, North Court entrance
EXPERIMENTAL ART SPACE | Level 2, outside the GPG
WEST GLASS CABINET | Level 2, opposite the Rowden White Library
MARCH 2020
Compendium
Andrew Seward, Artek Helpbern Laurence, Edward Dean, Makenzie Rose Coughlin
Curated by Tyler Meredith
Compendium provides a space for viewers to take a step back and participate in meaningful contemplation of the botanical world. Featuring artists Andrew Seward, Artek Helpbern Laurence and Edward Dean, the project explores the ability for the beauty of nature to provide a calming effect. While addressing their subject matter individually, these artist’s share an interest in botanical subject matter as well as the medium of photography. The exhibition includes a terrarium in the Ground Floor Cabinet, produced by Makenzie Rose Coughlin from the Herbarium Department. The combination of artists and botanists provides Compendium with an understanding of botany that encourages audiences to appreciate the natural world that surrounds them.
FEBRUARY 2020
Religions on the Fringe
Damien Laing
Religions on the Fringe celebrates the religious cultural diversity of Melbourne’s west, where the artist lives. In the wake of rapid suburbanisation of areas such as Tarniet and Rockbank, the exhibition documents the expression of religious identities in contexts of urban development, which between housing estates, supermarkets and alike leave little space for what would be traditionally considered the public sphere.
Urban development has become increasingly secularized in the 20th and 21st centuries, and a period of social redistribution following the second world war has promoted an urban planning focused on economic development. Australia has long looked to migrants from diverse backgrounds to bolster work markets, and todays ‘knowledge’ workers often find their first homes on the fringes of urban ‘greenfield’ developments. Despite the agnostic logic of commercialized public space leaving little room for cultural and religious expression, Religions on the Fringe presents such moments and the innovative methods used to maintain cultural identities.
JANUARY 2020
NWEB at Project Spaces
Nicola Blumenthal, Clara Joyce, Madeleine Peters, Sean Dowsett, Casper Connelly, Jasper Jordan-Lang
Curated by Hugo Blomley
SEPTEMBER 2019
PHOTOSTATS Redux
Victorian College of the Arts MCA Students and Staff: Ingmar Apinis, Jeremy Blincoe, Ka Chun Lay, Melanie Cobham, Jodie Di Natale, Kim Donaldson, Jaye Early, Ember Fairbairn, Leila Gerges, Irene Hanenbergh, Spencer Harrison, Kate Just, Karleng Lim, Sean Lowry, Nicholas Mellefont, Steven Rhall, Melody Spangaro, Gail Smith, Mimmalisa Trifilo and Julie Vinci
Curated by Masato Takasaka and David Attwood
PHOTOSTATS Redux is a response to an exhibition titled PHOTOSTATS held at the George Paton Gallery in 1985. Curated by Christopher van der Craats the exhibition included nine artists that each submitted an image for the curator to photocopy, the photocopy then being the exhibited artwork. In a publication accompanying the exhibition van der Craats explained, “There is no need to master any of the technical skills traditionally associated with the artist … ‘just push the button’ …The value of this work lies in its potential to expose the myth of originality and a refusal to acknowledge the ascendency of craft.”
PHOTOSTATS Redux reappraises van der Craats exhibition and revisits ideas around originality, skill and the production of images in the digital age.
PHOTOSTATS Redux Catalogue
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MAY 2019
Perspectif Magazine
Perspektif is a biannual print and online magazine dedicated to showcasing talents and disseminating ideas. Perspektif is Indonesian for perspective, a name that signifies our aims: to promote the acceptance of varying perspectives, whilst representing Indonesian culture in a global context.
On 27 April 2019, Perspektif launched The Perspektif Photowalk, an immersive art and photography event that aims to connect people to one another, and artists to art through nature explored in the Royal Botanical Garden and the Shrine of Remembrance.
Perspectif Magazine
APRIL 2019
Everything ends with end except cowgirl
April Chandler, Alice Watson, Nina Prendergast, Ruby Sinclair, Milly Haig
With a loose focus on Australian outback colours the artists discuss and collaborate. The artists layer their work on top of one another, using colours and photographs to create a ‘scene’. The work is playful and observational, the artists work on instinct when curating the show together.
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MARCH 2019
Surf’s Up
Bec Martin, Chas Manning, Edward Dean, Gabriella D’Costa, Matthew Ware
Curated by Matthew Ware
“‘Surf’s Up’ itself was to be the piece de resistance to Smile, the album that never was, Brian’s collaboration with Van Dyke Parks. The song itself emerges out of the legend that withholding it so long created. (It had been performed once by Brian at a piano, in 1967 on a Leonard Bernstein-bestows-his-blessing-on-rock television show, never to be heard again.) Is it as good as was breathlessly rumored by those who had heard the partial track? Well, yes.”
– Arthur Schmidt, Rolling Stone Magazine, October 1971.
Second Life: Conserving Experience
Experimental Art Space (level 2): Catherine Gill (painting conservation), Sholeh Magzub (ceramic conservation), Joshua Cassidy (photographic conservation), Chris Redman (digital conservation), and Katrina Watson (time-lapse photography)
West Glass Cabinet (level 2): Christine Mizzi (paper conservation)
Vitrine Project Space (ground floor): Lisa Mansfield (textile conservation)
Curation + installation design by Lisa Mansfield
Second Life: Conserving Experience examines the importance of everyday things and the memories attached to them. Photographs, toys, teacups, and games provide material evidence of culture, community and family – linking our contemporary life to the past, and to formative experiences with people we love.
Big thanks to The Break
Room for their sustainably-sourced shattered ceramics; Charity Bramwell and Nick Dorrer for installation support; and Katrina Watson for her technological know-how.
GPG PROJECT SPACES ARCHIVES
Please click to view PDF
2018 GPG PROJECT SPACES
2017 GPG PROJECT SPACES
2016 GPG PROJECT SPACES
2015 GPG PROJECT SPACES