PLATFORM

Call for Proposals -- July-November 2012

2011-11-30T21:31:00.002+11:00

Now accepting proposals for the exhibiting period between Jul - Nov 2012.

For this round we are particularly seeking proposals for the main PLATFORM exhibition space comprising of 13 cabinets in Campbell Arcade, Degraves Street pedestrian underpass.

Applications close: 15 January 2012

So get your thinking caps on!

View the Proposal Application Pack

View the Platform Floor Plan

Coming up at Platform...The Universe According to First Dog on the Moon

2011-11-09T12:21:00.007+11:00

Exhibition dates: 2 Dec 2011 -- 28 Jan 2012
Opening function: Fri 2 Dec 2011, 6-8pm

The Universe according to First Dog on the Moon

The end times are with us. We live in the dark heart of Earth’s final days, the planet’s creeping twilight, hurtling liminal, crepuscular, toward the grinding demise of Gaia. Struggling vainly, clinging wretchedly to our world’s crumbling, degraded crust – we seek answers, we seek even a dim light to guide us. As the grim parade of our broken lives shuffles past us, we need leaders, philosophers, great writers and artists to pierce the murk of ignorance and illuminate how we came to be here and how, if at all, we can crawl back from the precipice. Who will guide us through these dark times? Probably not First Dog on the Moon – he is too busy drawing pictures of marsupials and then laughing at them while in the bath. This is the First Dog on the Moon story.

First Dog on the Moon (aka Andrew Marlton) is the Editorial Cartoonist for online e-zine, <http://www.crikey.com.au> He is a merciless lampooner of anyone that gets his goat, yet is by all accounts a lovely fellow. His hilarious cartoons are available on t-shirts but not yet underpants. He has more Twitter followers than you.

November Exhibitions

2011-11-04T16:59:00.002+11:00

October Exhibitions

2011-11-04T16:57:00.001+11:00

September Exhibitions

2011-11-04T15:51:00.002+11:00

2011-08-04T21:30:00.003+10:00

August Exhibitions

June Exhibitions

2011-06-01T11:34:00.005+10:00

Exhibition Dates: 3–25 June 2011

Featured Artists:

Platform: KATIE LEE
Building a Scaffold for Democracy

Vitrine: EMMA HAMILTON Event of Whiteness

Sample: JENNI WALKER Untitled

Majorca: KATE TUCKER Warmth and Water

25 JUNE 7-7 Mon-Fri 9-5 Sat. Degraves Street Melbourne.

May Exhibitions

2011-06-01T11:30:00.003+10:00

Exhibition dates: 5–27 May 2011

Featured Artists:

Platform: CREATE THE EXAMPLE (Human Rights and Arts Film Festival Exhibition, curated by Brooke Tia Silcox and Joanna Gould)

Vitrine: IEUAN WEINMAN: Threatening Environments

Sample: NICOLE BREEDON: Chopping Block Paradox

Majorca: JOANNA ANDERSON: Africa

7am–7pm Mon-Fri 9–5 Sat. Degraves Street Melbourne.

PROPOSALS 2012

2011-04-11T18:30:00.006+10:00

PLATFORM IS NOW ACCEPTING PROPOSALS FOR 2012

Exhibiting period: February–December 2012

Closing date: Friday 24 June 2011

Application pack here

Map of Platform site here

April Exhibitions

2011-04-01T11:25:00.004+11:00

Exhibition Dates: 1–30 April, 2011

Degraves Street Subway
Melbourne Victoria Australia

Featured Artists:

Platform: SARAH crowEST AND JONAS ROPPONEN: Mound Activity Vs Slime Theory

Vitrine: ANDREW TURLAND: INSTRUCTION #2 (for a modern man)

Sample: SUSANNAH WILLIAMS: RatFink Travels III

Majorca: MARITA LILLIE: Centre Place Surveillance

7am to 7pm Mon–Fri, 9am–5pm Sat. Access via Degraves Street Melbourne.

March Exhibitions

2011-03-04T16:17:00.003+11:00

Exhibition dates: 4–26 March 2011

7-7 Mon-Fri 9-5 Sat. Degraves Street Melbourne.

Degraves Street Subway
Melbourne Victoria Australia

Featured Artists:

Platform: House me within a geometric quality curated by Patrice Sharkey.

Featuring Liang Luscombe, Antonia Sellbach, Esther Stewart and Masato Takasaka with contributions* from:

* works from the permanent collection and selected loans from the EVERYTHING ALWAYS ALL READY-MADE WANNABE STUDIO MASATOTECTURES MUSEUM OF FOUND REFRACTIONS 1994-2011

Justin Andrews
Damiano Bertoli
Fergus Binns
Stephen Bram
Simon Castricum
COBRA
Lane Cormick
Renee Cosgrave
Ross Coulter
James Deutsher
Melissa D'or
Anna Ephraim + Warren Taylor
Sam George
Diena Georgetti
Sharon Goodwin
Matthew Griffin
Ry Haskings
Christopher L.G Hill
Matt Hinkley
Estelle Ihász
Madeline Kidd
Debra Kunda
Merryn Lloyd
James Lynch
Nicholas Mangan
Lizzy Newman
Kerrie Poliness
Lisa Radford
Nick Selenitsch
Bryan Spier
Masato Takasaka
Jeremy The
Inverted Topology
Blair Trethowan
Meredith Turnbull
Helen Walter
Oscar Yanez

Vitrine: Kat Clarke

Sample: Tristan Davies

Majorca: Yuria Okamura and James Murane.

February 2011 Exhibitions

2011-02-09T16:41:00.002+11:00

Friday 4th -- Saturday 26 February 2011

Featured Artists:

Platform: PEOPLE COLLECTIVE

Vitrine: CARRIE MCGRATH – Hitting the Jars

Sample: Rebecca Agnew

Majorca: Megan Cheyne

7am-7pm Mon-Friday, 9am-5pm Sat. Degraves Street Melbourne.

CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF PLATFORM!

2010-12-03T07:26:00.007+11:00

Celebrating 20 years of Platform

launch and party: Friday 10 December, 6-8pm

Campbell Arcade

Exhibition dates: 10 Dec 2010 - 29 Jan 2011

Artists include:

AND, Kate Cotching, Adam Cruickshank, DAMP, Michael Graeve, Brad Haylock, Richard Holt, Ash Keating, Simone LeAmon, Bridie Lunney & Meredith Turnbull, Simon Pericich, Tape Projects and Andrew Seward

The event will also launch the publication What Art, Which Public: Platform Artists Group 1990-2010 which captures just some of the history, events and exhibitions from this period. Edited by Angela Brophy, featuring an introductory essay by Zara Stanhope, interview with former directors and short story by Richard Holt.

Details on how to purchase the book will be coming soon. [update, 08/02/10: Now available from Sticky Institute and the MUMA bookshop.]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PLATFORM!

2010-11-05T12:58:00.002+11:00

You are invited to our next opening night at Platform Public Contemporary Art Spaces:

6-8pm Friday 5th November 2010

Degraves Street Subway, Melbourne Victoria Australia

Featured Artists:

KARRI CAMERON, THOMAS CHARLTON, AIMEE FAIRMAN, ROBERT GRYMEL, BEN KRYCER, JO MORTREUX, JESSICA REDLICH, MARK RODDA, FINNBARR SHAW, AL OUCHTOMSKY (Curator), CAL WATSON – Carbon Co-dependence

Vitrine: GEORGIE ROXBY SMITH – Glitchym

Sample: JESSIE BULLIVANT – Lift and Lower (Presented as part of Patrice Sharkey’s Emerging Curator’s Residency)

Exhibition until 26 November 7-7 Mon-Fri 9-5 Sat. Degraves Street Melbourne.

2010-10-19T17:50:00.002+11:00

Exhibition dates: 8--30 October 2010

Featured Artists:

PAUL KALEMBA – Spoilt Rotten

Vitrine: SELENA DE CARVOLHO – The Invisible Wait

Majorca: HEIDI KOZAR – Untitled

Sample: JULIET ROWE – Free Sunsets (Presented as part of Patrice Sharkey’s Emerging Curator’s Residency)

Degraves Street Subway
Melbourne Victoria Australia

September Exhibitions

2010-09-01T15:01:00.002+10:00

Exhibition Dates:

03 September - 02 October 2010

Featured Artists:
Kieran Stewart & Stone Lee

Vitrine: Voyeurism by Bernadette Burke

Sample: Merryn Lloyd

(curated by Patrice Sharkey as part of Platform's Emerging Curator mentorship Program)

Majorca: David Mutch

Underground Garden: The Resistance of Memory by Paul Kalemba

August Exhibtions

2010-08-05T14:14:00.003+10:00

Exhibition Dates: 6 - 28 August 2010

Degraves Street Subway
Melbourne Victoria Australia

Featured Artists:
breadcrumb winner
Dan Bell, Molly Cook, James Eisen, Olle Holmberg, Rowan McNaught, Tom Polo.

Vitrine: Run Run Run by No Bells Prize (Penelope Skliros and Fayen d’Evie)

Sample: Limp Liquidation by Liang Xia Luscombe (Presented as part of Patrice Sharkey’s Emerging Curator’s Residency)

Majorca: Rest Assured by Bonnie Hanlon

Underground Garden: Paul Kalemba

Platform Contemporary Art Spaces: Applications for 2011 Open

2010-07-09T13:04:00.005+10:00

Please see linked application pack and gallery plan for further details.

Gallery plan: http://www.scribd.com/doc/34090061/Platform-Floor-Plan-2010

July Exhibitions

2010-07-07T18:10:00.004+10:00

Exhibition Dates: 9-31 July, 2010

Platform
Abby Storey, Touchstones
and
Lizzie Hall & Tom Bonin, Girls don’t like small tanks MK3

Vitrine
Victoria Lees: Fixity

Majorca
Carmel Seymour, I Often Feel Strangers are Controlling My Thoughts

June Exhibitions

2010-06-02T15:57:00.002+10:00

Now on until Saturday 03 July

opening:
6-8pm Friday 4th June 2010

Degraves Street Subway
Melbourne Victoria Australia

Featured Artists:
Ryan L Foote, Dinner Table Project: The Colour Series
Julian White, Quintessence
Anna Miller-Yeaman, Untitled
Marc Freeman, Untitled

Plus a special project by:
Matt Shaw
A Feasting Vignette Commission for Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2010
On show until the end of July.

Platform Emerging Curator's Program: Deadline Extended!

2010-05-30T13:18:00.002+10:00

Platform is now accepting applications for the Emerging Curator’s Program running from July to December 2010.

The deadline is now Friday the 11th of June 2010.

Platform Emerging Curator's Program: Applications Open for 2010

2010-05-11T22:34:00.003+10:00

May Exhibitions

2010-05-06T12:09:00.003+10:00

Now on until Saturday 29 May 2010

Degraves Street Subway
Melbourne Victoria Australia

Featured Artists:
Vexta: Extinction in Technicolour
Jordan Wood: Untitled
Kumiko Michishita: Untitled
Carl Scrase: The Generative Power of Opposites

Plus a special project by:
Matt Shaw
A Feasting Vignette Commission for Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2010
On show now until the end of July.

2010-03-31T11:34:00.001+11:00

APRIL SHOWS OPENING
6-8pm THURSDAY 1 APRIL 2010

Degraves Street Subway
Melbourne Victoria Australia

Featured Artists:
Meredith Turnbull and Bridie Lunney: You'll Be the Death of Me
Ange Leech: Still Running
Crystal Knight: Mirror Mirror Off the Wall
Dani Green: Tourist

Plus a special project by:
Matthew Shaw
A Feasting Vignette Commission for Melbourne Food & Wine Festival 2010
On show now until the end of July!

THE MARCH SHOWS

2010-02-26T11:00:00.001+11:00

UNDISCOVERED PRESS

2010-02-10T14:56:00.005+11:00

Unleashing the zine habit onto the masses, The Undiscovered Press showcases the work of twelve dedicated zinesters from all around Australia. A mix of seasoned and new zinemakers have been set the challenge of expanding their A5 publications into large format artworks. Paper, pens, robots, envelopes, photos, ducks and textas are combining to explode these ephemeral works of stapled glory into full scaled artistic pieces. Unearthing their zine creations from their bedrooms, stealthy office photocopying sessions and dusty storage areas, these chronic zinemakers are an eclectic reflection of The Undiscovered Press.

Often the artistic merit of zines are overlooked by zine readers and collectors. In fact, when described, most people describe zines as literary works rather than realising they are also small works of very personal art. The Undiscovered Press focuses on showcasing the artistic side of zines. The zine makers from all around Australia have expanded their own zine making practices into twelve eclectic and contemporary artworks. A difficult challenge as zines are notoriously ephemeral but to display these artworks in such a public place will pique the interest of the public to the underbelly of the artistic world, The Undiscovered Press.

Featuring: Androniki Douramakos, Cameron Baker, Mary-Helen Daly, Sarah Foster, Brendan Halyday, Marc Martin, Arlene Texta Queen, Pat Grant, Michelle Vandermeer, On Wednesday and Fergus.

Opening Night Friday 12 February 6-8pm

JESSICA HERRINGTON

2010-02-10T14:35:00.003+11:00

Jessica Herrington
A particular excess
installation detail
© 2009

The focus of my work is on the mistakes, errors, and the testing of limits. Painting is a medium which embodies ideas of perfection and consequently leads to a greater sense of mistake or failure. There are qualities within paint that speak about the human body and existence. Paint is both abject and awkward. Like our bodies, paint has a structure capable of both beauty and the grotesque. My work explores the melancholy aspects of human nature by using a combination of elements that glitter and drip, creating works that are pathetic, funny and sad. A particular excess is made by loading on more paint than a canvas can physically hold. Paint falls off, then is scooped up and placed back on the canvas. Black paint covers over surfaces which were once vibrantly coloured. The black surface hints at what is underneath, letting tiny pieces of colour and glitter float to the top. I like to think of this process as a conversation (or argument) with painting. When I pour paint onto a canvas it reacts (or rebuts) by emptying the paint off itself or collapsing altogether.

Jessica Herrington currently lives and works in Canberra. This is her second solo show in Melbourne. She has exhibited in group and solo shows throughout NSW, QLD, VIC and the ACT. Herrington has an eye for the awkward and the overlooked. Her practice spans video, objects, photography, prints and painting. Her work paradoxically plays up to and attracts the viewer through its seductive and voluptuous qualities yet simultaneously repulses with this complete excess.

At Vitrine throughout February - opening Friday 12 February.

TEGAN LEWIS

2010-02-10T14:00:00.005+11:00

Tegan Lewis
Skin
Polaroid Spectra film emulsion in clear polyurethane resin
© 2009

The language of analogue photography abounds with sensation. It refers to the bodily and the alchemical: gelatin, emulsion, silver and salt. These substances transform the plane of paper into the space of an image. The photographic negative is submitted to bursts of light inside the dark chamber of the camera. Emulsion, like a layer of skin, holds and protects an image. Composed of gelatin sourced from animal hide, bone and offal, it is unique for its ability to hold sensitive chemicals, to expand with water and to protect the silver nitrate and sensitive salts. This is a visceral process, one that uses material from the body of an animal and involves the senses of the human body to process. Both human skin and photographic emulsions share similar vulnerabilities and sensitivities. Under the red glow of the safe light, the body dances between the enlarger and the chemical baths; the tempo orchestrated by the clock's second hand. I have created casts embedding photographic detritus in clear resin. Upon reflection, I began to see that I had inadvertently created elemental lenses. Light is focused through these objects, projecting new images into space. I see this work as the reactivation of the analogue within the context of digital image making.

Tegan Lewis completed a Bachelor of FIne Arts (Honours) at Monash University in 2009. Her practice currently includes sculpture, analogue photography and camera obscura environments. Tegan has recently exhibited with Light Projects in Melbourne and is now embarking on her Master of Fine Arts by Research at Monash.

NAVA's Art Censorship Guide

2010-02-06T19:25:00.004+11:00

What you should know about threats to artistic freedom

and how to deal with them. Go get it!

http://www.visualarts.net.au/shop/artcensorshipguide

Re/Gendered on ABC Arts

2010-02-02T12:25:00.002+11:00

Click here to watch the ABC Arts story!

RE/GENDERED PERFORMANCES

2010-01-30T15:57:00.000+11:00

Together with the girls, uh we mean guys, from 4EVAMORE, Platform was lucky enough to have Ghetto Pussy (Anastasia Zaravinos & Byron St John), and the MC talents of Mzzz Erin Tasmania Agent Cleave, Godzilla & Mummy Complex at our Midsumma opening. Here are just a few of the pics.

MONIKA TICHACEK

2010-01-30T15:43:00.000+11:00

Monika Tichacek
Lineage of The Divine
Video Still
© 2003

“I saw Amanda Lepore for the first time in New York in late 2000. I was instantly fascinated by her unreal perfection. She was a living breathing pin-up, her gender ambiguous, however obvious that no one could be born in that body. I have used her body and its interventions to represent a complex set of issues - freedom, expression, possibility, mutation, and desire. Cultural rules and restrictions are discarded, normality and order seem to manifest within a hovering uneasiness.”

Monika Tichacek lives and works in Sydney and is represented by Karen Woodbury Gallery (Melbourne). Her recent solo exhibition, The Shadowers (2005) was exhibited at Artspace (Sydney), CACSA (Adelaide), and the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane).

TEJAL SHAH (INDIA)

2010-01-30T15:36:00.000+11:00

Tejal Shah with Marco Paulo Rolla (Brasil)
Trans Video Stills
Dual channel video installation
12 min, colour, sound, 2004-5

The beard as a macho statement. Jewellery and make-up constructing the female. Two masks that work as a cliché sign of gender for society. What happens when male and female cross these borders? Using video and performance, we construct the trans –formation, -mutation, -figuration, from one gender to its opposite.”

Tejal Shah lives and works in Bombay, India. She has exhibited widely in museums, galleries and film festivals including; Tate Modern (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Brooklyn Museum (New York) and National Gallery of Modern Art (Bombay). Visit Shah's website here.

JAKE WOTHERSPOON

2010-01-30T15:15:00.003+11:00

Jake Wotherspoon
Opening Performance
artist, glue, hair collection, electric fan
variable dimensions
© 2010

Jake Wotherspoon’s work questions the restraints that society has placed upon both the male and female in relation to bodily hair. Through affixing facial hair to portraits of female models, the artist creates a partial collapse between two genders. He morphs together masculine and feminine characteristics within one body, creating figures that do not conform to the assumptions made about the morphological characteristics of female or male bodies, but instead draw attention to our binary system of gender.

Jake Wotherspoon is a Melbourne based artist who completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) at VCA in 2009. He was the winner of the 2008 CCP Kodak Salon and has exhibited internationally and at Seventh Gallery, Tape Projects and CCP.

DREW PETTIFER

2010-01-30T15:03:00.001+11:00

Drew Pettifer
Drip Painting
Paint over c-type photograph
variable dimensions
© 2010

Drew Pettifer’s new series Fluid directly explores the concept of ‘fluid gender’. It transgresses the expected gender boundaries of ‘male’ by shifting the fetishised gaze onto a male body, rather than the female one. Viscous, satin black gloss acrylic paint has been poured over photographs of the male nude, obscuring each subject’s genitals until it pools across the bottom of the cabinet. These drips add an abject quality to the male nude, alluding to bodily fluids and leaking bodies. The deliberate obscuring of the genitals in these works also goes some way towards de-gendering the subject; the main signifier of gender in the naked body is concealed.

Drew Pettifer is a Melbourne based artist and curator. Recent solo exhbitions include You are the Light at The Counihan Gallery In Brunswick (2009), The Decisive Moment at Kings ARI (2009) and Cake boys: photographs in two series at Blindside ARI (2008). See more at: www.drewpettifer.com

FRAN BARRETT, KATE BLACKMORE, ANASTASIA ZARAVINOS

2010-01-30T15:00:00.000+11:00

Fran Barrett, Kate Blackmore, Anastasia Zaravinos
Drag Acts
Video Still
© 2010

Drag Acts is a collaboration between three artists: Fran Barrett, Kate Blackmore and Anastasia Zaravinos. Drag Acts explores the spectacular and absurd qualities of drag. The work confuses theatrical spectacle with darker more meditative moments in order to investigate the mechanisms behind the act.

Fran Barrett, Kate Blackmore and Anastasia Zaravinos live and work in Sydney. Fran and Kate are both members of the performance collaboration Brown Council and are directors of Serial Space, Sydney. Anastasia has exhibited her video work at numerous Sydney and regional galleries and is a member of Ghetto Pussy.

LIAM BENSON

2010-01-30T14:46:00.000+11:00

Liam Benson
Coat of Arms
C-type photograph
90 x 120 cm

Liam Benson is a practicing performance artist. He applies this foundation to a variety of mediums, primarily video and photography, not only as a means to document and present performance work, but also to experiment with interdisciplinary techniques. His work explores the slippery slope of contemporary masculinity and has a parallel interest in broader social concerns such as cultural environment, popular culture, media andlanguage, and how they influence and inform the conventions of gender roles.

Liam Benson is a Sydney based artist and has exhibited at MOP Projects, Kings ARI, Linden Centre for Contemporary arts, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, Liverpool Regional Museum, Blacktown Arts Centre as well as international touring shows Designfesta: Through a Strangers Eyes, Tokyo and Gang Festival 05-06, Indonesia (both 2005). Benson has also curated shows at Depot Gallery and is one half of the performance collaboration The Motel Sisters with Naomi Oliver.

MICHELLE TRAN

2010-01-30T14:41:00.000+11:00

Michelle Tran’s uncomfortable photographic arrangements imply ambiguous notions of gender. For Re/Gendered, a stark portrait of a Vietnamese transgendered subject is placed alongside sexually suggestive imagery of domestic interiors. Although the photographs are rooted in documentary traditions, these juxtapositions unsettle the viewer’s sense of self and work to destabilise prescribed gender identity.

Michelle Tran is currently completing her Master of Fine Art (Research) 2009 at the VCA. She has exhibited at Lindberg Contemporary Art, Sutton Gallery, Seventh Gallery and TCB. She has also won the Athenaeum Visual Art Prize in 2007. Michelle Tran is represented by Lindberg Contemporary Art.

4EVAMORE

2010-01-30T14:30:00.001+11:00

Fresh from a world tour promoting the album ‘don’t text me like that’ the boys take on their hometown of Melbourne. Fame has its price but for now these guys are about the fans and the love they bring. 4evamore; Seth, Tyson, Ricky and Randy, are a drag boy band partway through their mission to take the world by storm. With solo albums, world tours, a movie deal and a line of scents by Calvin Klein,’ Boy Essence’ these boys will take it to the top. With a hearts of gold and boyish charm their songs talk about life and the troubles of a boy in love, and the terminal sentence of a broken heart.

GERARD O’CONNOR & MARC WASIAK

2010-01-30T14:28:00.000+11:00

The Vivien Story, I'll make you famous baby. Hollywood stars and their stage mothers, why don't you sing for us darling. Sing for your tuppence SUGAR – Dance Darling Dance. The chameleon Vivien St James shines as the star of this series. We liked the idea of the driven star and the transsexual, yet it all began with our early obsession with beauty and glamour. We are interested in the notion of celebrity and how it originates within the domestic sphere. Like so many emerging artists, fashion designers, stars or drag queens who begin in front of the husqvarna, home is our beginning.

Gerard (photographer) and Marc (stylist) have been working in collaboration with Harry Rekas (retoucher for Large Magazine) for nearly ten years. They work predominantly in the commercial fashion industry, but also collaborate on independent photographic art projects.

LAURA CASTAGNINI

2010-01-30T14:26:00.000+11:00

Laura Castagnini is a Melbourne based curator currently writing a thesis about contemporary feminist art. She was the 2009 Curator-in-Residence at Platform, and Producer for Tape Projects 100 Proofs exhibition for the 2010 Next Wave Festival. In 2008, she co-initiated and managed an artist run space, O Projects, and was awarded a Quarterbred artist grant and residency in Sydney. She has worked for Adelaide Fringe Festival, and for Next Wave as assistant to curator Tai Snaith for her 2008 project House Proud. Laura is also a practising artist; she holds a Bachelor of Visual Art (Painting) from Monash University and has exhibited in Australia, Italy and Japan. She is a recent recipient of an Australia Council Skills and Development Grant that will fund an internship at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, in 2010.

RE/GENDERED

2010-01-19T13:13:00.005+11:00

Jake Wotherspoon
Fiona
photoprint with hair
© 2009

Presented by Platform as part of Midsumma 2010. Curator Laura Castagnini. Artists: Monika Tichacek (Sydney), Tejal Shah (India), Jake Wotherspoon (Melbourne), Drew Pettifer (Melbourne), Fran Barrett, Kate Blackmore & Anastasia Zaravinos (Sydney), Liam Benson (Sydney), 4evamore (Melbourne), Michelle Tran (Melbourne), Gerard O’Connor & Marc Wasiak (Melbourne).

Re/Gendered brings together a number of high profile international and Australian artists in a group exhibition that celebrates the notion of fluid or 'unstable' gender. These artists all aim to transgress and blur the boundaries of gender performance. Often using drag as a technique to destabilise identity, these diverse artists disrupt and subvert the traditional binary system of gender. In turns joyful, disturbing, and deliberately ambiguous, these artworks expose the theatricality involved in our everyday performance of gender roles.

The Opening Night will include queer drag performances from guests including Mzzz Erin Tasmania, 4evamore, Adonis, Agent Cleave, Godzilla and Mummy Complex, plus more!

OPENING: 6-9PM MONDAY 25 JANUARY

This is the final work developed by Laura Castagnini as part of her 2009 Curator In Residence with Platform. Laura will be going to the US in 2010 as part of an Australia Council funded residency with the Brooklyn Museum, New York.

FLINDERS ST STATION TURNS 100!

2010-01-13T12:01:00.008+11:00

Above: The centenary of the VR in Melbourne in September 1954.

Curated by Jenny Davies, author of the new book Beyond The Façade, this exhibition presents decade-by-decade views depicting the many facets of the Flinders Street Station’s history through a combination of paintings, photographs, stencils and text. Presented in conjunction with artist John Bates, and industrial design student Tristan Tait, this show kicks off the celebrations in the lead up to the centenary of the station on 22 January.

This extensive historical display is divided across the twelve main cases, starting in the late 19th century when the architectural designs were mixed up with the plans for a station in India, right through to the current situation of successive government neglect and the demise of this wonderful public building.

Pre 1900s features the first award winning design by Fawcett & Ashworth. 1900s includes the construction period, Official Opening of the VRI (Victorian Railways Institute) and the opening of Flinders Street Station. 1910s examines the extensive public facilities of the Railways Institute (including a childcare centre and gym). 1920s looks at Chief Commissioner Clapp and his visionary initiatives. 1930s highlights the Children’s Nursery the work of Sister Northcott. 1940s is all about dancing & Miss Gladstone during and after the war. 1950s covers the many special events and the building of our very own Degraves Street Subway! 1960s showcases the retail history with the much loved Hearns Hobbies and City Hatters. 1970s shows a shift to strikes, unionism and turmoil and the first demolition threats. 1980s witnesses the start of the demolition with the loss of the Concourse and the famous Mirka Mora Mural. 1990s shows further deterioration of the station and surrounds. 2000s onwards presents architectural highlights and the publication of Jenny's book Beyond the Façade. The Centenary Edition Book is only available by direct mail order at this stage. The current edition is available from various bookshops throughout Melbourne. Ask your local bookstore to order stocks!

Closes Saturday 23 January 2010

TRISTAN TAIT

2010-01-11T21:25:00.002+11:00

Tristan Tait
Flinders Street Station
stencil on board
(installation view)
© 2010

Tristan Tait currently works with painted wood mediums in order to construct stylised imagery and distinctive interpretations. His latest works are a contemporary study on the train network and the associated Flinders Street Station, considering the pathways and viewpoints from the everyday commuter. This subject matter is also of significance through a personal and reflective connection to the journey and to the metropolitan landscape. After moving to Melbourne a few years ago from country Victoria, the work epitomises vividly the influence of graffiti and stencil street art forms that are ever evident in Melbourne’s unique and extensive number of laneways. Next year Tristan will be undertaking his final year studying industrial design at RMIT University.

ROBERTA RICH

2010-01-10T23:25:00.000+11:00

Roberta Rich
Orifice (Slow Suck Part II)
digital video stills
© 2009

Orifice (Slow Suck Part II) and Nude Thump are two video drawings using my body. I am interested in exploring awkward and confronting bodily actions and displaying them within manipulated loops of video footage. The result is an absurd, repetitious canvas that fuses a feminist visuality with an experimental, masculine soundtrack. The work is manufactured within the broader context of video-art and feminist performance but remains, at its essence, a genuine interrogation of my own female body, its socio-political location, and its function as an expressive medium in itself. Moreover, I am choosing to deliberately position my body as both a vulnerable and increasingly complex, challenging entity - as the subject of the voyeuristic gaze.

Roberta Rich recently graduated from Monash University with a Bachelor of Fine Art - Painting. In 2008, Roberta completed a residency in Prato, Italy, as part of Monash University's Exchange program. In 2010 she plans to continue studying at Monash University to complete a Bachelor of Fine Art - Honours.

MIND THE GAP

2009-12-31T12:52:00.002+11:00

Mind the Gap is a multi-staged project using art as a communication tool to achieve social inclusion. This installation features more than 70 artworks from 20 residents living at Sacred Heart Mission (SHM), Queens Road Rooming House.

This project is proof that individuals who have experienced homelessness can use their creativity to reconnect with the wider community. The exhibition aims to raise community awareness about the success of people who have been marginalised due to economic factors, mental illness or disability and to demonstrate the positive outcome of creativity as a vehicle for resilience.

Queens Road Rooming House opened in December 2005 with 64 self-contained units in central Melbourne. The aim of the Rooming House is to help people break the cycle of homelessness by providing residents with stable, long term accommodation and support to maintain their housing. The Arts Studio opened its doors in August 2008 with seven residents attending art sessions. The Studio was conceived as a safe space – an environment where residents could develop self esteem, support themselves, acknowledge their creativity and go forward to breach the gap in their dreams.

Today more than 20 residents are active in the Queens Road art program. Activities in the Studio provide opportunities for socialisation and the use of art as therapy. Studio work provides a focus, a place to develop communication between self and others, a source for residents to explore their emotions and develop their artistic skills.

The artists, dedicate this installation to the PCA crew at the Queens Road Rooming House.Your helping spirit has touched us deeply.We feel part of community in which people help each other. It changes our world to know you are there. – Gail Hart, Arts Therapist

Platform dedicates this exhibition to artist Andrew Dowd who was killed in tragic circumstances shortly after the opening last December. RIP Andy – thank you for sharing your art and music with us.

ANALOGUE ART MAP

2009-12-20T11:58:00.000+11:00

Analogue Art Map
print, wool, pins, paper, pens
(interactive installation detail)
© 2009

Analogue Art Map invites all of Melbourne to draw maps to miscellaneous locations around the city. Just come along and draw your own maps for someone else to follow. The maps can point visitors to favorite hidden city spots, lead followers on a treasure hunt or be directions to stashed objects of desire. All maps, mapers and map followers welcome. Materials provided for the unprepared.

Analogue Art Map works invites creative participation from audiences and passers-by. Through architectural interaction, mapping social networks and psycho cartography, the group seeks to both record and generate connections between creative individuals and the spaces in which they live. Analogue Art Map strives to continue its ground breaking work using only obsolete technology. Works have been presented previously in Melbourne, Copenhagen New York and Singapore.

MAGIC EYE

2009-11-27T16:41:00.000+11:00

Magic Eye brings together a group of diverse individual and collective contemporary art-makers to fill the Platform cabinets with collage, assemblage and drawing. These artists all share an interest in the uncanny, the perverse and the hallucinatory...

ENRIQUE TOCHEZ ANDERSON
HUGO ATKINS
THEA BAUMANN & DARIO VACIRCA
RACHEL FEERY & LISA STEWART
GREATEST HITS
KATE JUST
ROSIE KAVANAVOCH
LOUISE KLERKS
ANDY MAC
PIPPA MAKGILL
ILIA ROSLI
MARK SILIPO

ENRIQUE TOCHEZ ANDERSON

2009-11-27T16:40:00.002+11:00

Enrique Tochez Anderson
paint, fabric, plastic
(installation detail)
© 2009

Enrique Tochez graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) from RMIT in 2007. Since then he has continued to develop his solo practice, as well as developing collaborative multi-disciplinary projects including the upcoming GALAXYHEAD party which will present futuristic installation and new electronic music at the Lobb & Frith Project Space. Further information is available at Bugloss WD.

HUGO ATKINS

2009-11-27T16:39:00.003+11:00

Hugo Atkins
tubing, foam, paint, sand, teeth
(installation detail)
© 2009

Hugo Atkins is an emerging artist based in Melbourne. His work was included in Zero & Not at 45Downstairs in August 2009.

THEA BAUMANN & DARIO VACIRCA

2009-11-27T16:38:00.001+11:00

Thea Baumann & Dario Vacirca
gold leaf paper, cocktail glasses, neon tubing, toy dinosaurs, video loop on various screens (installation detail)
© 2009

RACHEL FEERY & LISA STEWART

2009-11-27T16:37:00.002+11:00

Rachel Feery & Lisa Stewart
acrylic painted backdrop, polystyrene, cardboard, paint, sand
(installation detail)
© 2009

As explorers of imaginary realms, artists Rachel Feery and Lisa Stewart work collaboratively, combining sound, sculpture, video and installation to take people on an adventure through the unknown. Just like a science fiction or storybook plot, they create openings – be it a viewfinder, soundscape, portal or diorama – from which one can enter the magical world of make-believe. These constructions aim to transport the viewer out of the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Rachel Feery completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours at Monash University in 2008. Recent exhibitions include: Hide and Seek, China Club Arts Hub, This is Not Art Festival, Newcastle, 2009, Big!, Queens Theatre, Adelaide, 2009, Wanderlust at C3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne, 2009, Make Believe, C3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne 2008 and Extended mind: Extended Body, Off The Kerb, Melbourne 2007.

Lisa Stewart completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts in Photomedia at Monash University in 2007 and a Bachelor of Arts in Film & Television at Monash University in 2009. Recent exhibitions include: Hide and Seek, China Club Arts Hub, This is Not Art Festival, Newcastle, 2009, Post: A Group Show, Place Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne, 2009, Big! Queens Theatre, Adelaide, 2009, The Ecologies Project, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne 2008, Swift: Video art screenings, St Kilda Film Festival, Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, Melbourne 2008, Once Upon a Time: Off the Kerb’s 1st Birthday Show, Off the Kerb Gallery, Melbourne, 2008, Through Different Eyes, George Paton Gallery, Melbourne University, Melbourne 2007.

Past collaborations between Feery & Stewart include, Echoes of Gold at O Projects Gallery, Melbourne 2008 and Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney, 2009, Debut V at Blindside, 2009, and The Craft Exchange Salon at 25A Warehouse as part of The Melbourne Fringe Festival, 2008.

GREATEST HITS

2009-11-27T16:36:00.002+11:00

Greatest Hits
Silver paint
© 2009

Greatest Hits (Gavin Bell, Jarrah de Kuijer & Simon McGlinn) is a impulsive paranoia driven collaboration, hellbent on questioning the absurd equilibrium of creation and destruction in the psyche of a group that perversely ravishes the notion of the creation of meaning and interpretation. Ritualistic acts of frustrated futility allude to the inane purpose of artistic endeavour, referencing common notions of the artist and their mysterious drive to push importance over practicality and into a world where the end has no beginning. Narrative collides with genre while systematically combining optimistic possibility with the sweet smell of ever-present failure. Insight into the views of three protagonists' psychological catastrophes, results in a cross-pollinating narrative that continuously feeds back into itself in a churning cycle of connections and potentialities for meaning.

The collaborative group Greatest Hits are three individuals trying their best to agree long enough to work on creative projects. Their outcomes highlight the dynamic of the group consciousness and how it relates to their world and contemporary art. Solo exhibitions include Keep it together at TCB in September 2009 and TACOCAT at Westspace in June 2009.

KATE JUST

2009-11-27T16:35:00.005+11:00

Kate Just
Framed collage on archival paper
78 x 58cm
© 2009

Kate Just is an American born, Melbourne based artist who first became known for her sculptural knitting practice informed strongly by emotional and autobiographical references. Just's practice has also encompassed use of mixed media sculpture, collage, digital print, and video. Experiences of childhood memory, her own migration, and the garden/natural environment as an allegory for the human condition influenced her early works, while more recent works envisage transformations of human (in particular female) bodies into natural and other forms and the landscapes these imagined bodies inhabit. Just’s works incorporate Greek and other mythologies, such as Persephone's descent underground and Daphne's transformation into a laurel tree. She also uses religious and art historical references, studies in feminism and science fiction. Her work posits transformation as a metaphor for personal struggles, loss, awakening, emerging sexuality and creativity.

Just is represented by Nellie Castan Gallery, South Yarra.

LOUISE KLERKS

2009-11-27T16:34:00.004+11:00

Louise Klerks
Ink on paper
100 x 70 cm
(detail)
© 2009

Louise Klerks graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 2005. She completed her Honours degree in sculpture, performance and installation art. Since relocating to Melbourne in 2007, Louise has completed a Diploma of Education at Melbourne University and works as the education coordinator at No Vacancy Gallery. Her particular interests include illustration, performance art and public interventions.

ROSIE KAVANAVOCH

2009-11-27T16:34:00.002+11:00

Rosie Kavanavoch
spray paint, miniature canvases, mirror balls, photographs, toys
(installation detail)
© 2009

ANDY MAC

2009-11-27T16:33:00.001+11:00

Andy Mac
spray paint, alcohol flask
(installation detail)
© 2009

PIPPA MAKGILL

2009-11-27T16:32:00.001+11:00

Pippa Makgill
fabric, wooden poles, plaster casts, toys, wire
(installation detail)
© 2009

My studio is currently filled with plastered objects, plastic animals, $2 shop stuff and material casts of objects. Eclectic maybe? I use 600ml coke bottles a lot, I think I may just be trying to hide the fact that I buy too many of them. Pieces of objects are bound together to make strange and quirky gestures. Play and experimentation are central to creating a language. If my family were artists that influenced me my mum would be Richard Tuttle, my dad would be Hany Armanious, my big sister would be Mikala Dwyer and my little brother would be Gedi Sibony – Franz West would be my favourite uncle.

Pippa graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 2004. Her current practice spans sculpture, installation, photography and drawing. Pippa has exhibited with Special Gallery, Enjoy Gallery, High St Project and the Physics Room in New Zealand and C3 Contemporary Art Space in Melbourne. Pippa is currently completing her MFA by Research at Monash University.

ILIA ROSLI

2009-11-27T16:31:00.001+11:00

Ilia Rosli
dried orange peels
(installation detail)
© 2009

My practice is defined by an intimate interaction with materials.
Objects of the home and things at hand are used as tools and symbols
to playfully explore ideas of memory, value, time, chance, and logic.
Currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Art, this November I will also
be showing at the VCA Art Graduate exhibition and at Bus Projects in
February. I have previously shown at various group and student
exhibitions at the Margaret Lawrence, George Paton, as well as at
Platform.

MARK SILIPO

2009-11-27T16:30:00.002+11:00

Mark Silipo
tattooed doll, texta and ink on paper
individual works with variable dimensions
(installation detail)
© 2009

Mark Silipo is a freelance illustrator and designer based in Melbourne. He completed a Bachelor of Design (Communication Design) degree at RMIT University in 2008 where he majored in doodling. His work mixes surreal psychedelia with pop culture and childhood memories. In 2009 he solely illustrated and designed a 52-page zine called Teen Vomit.

More of Mark's work can be seen at Magic Sweater.

THE INTERVENTIONIST GUIDE TO MELBOURNE

2009-10-29T18:31:00.006+11:00

This massive public art intervention took place at Platform and around the streets of the city throughout October. Curated by Lynda Roberts from Public Assembly, The Interventionist Guide to Melbourne featured artists: Ilan Abrahams, Caz Guiney, Ceri Hann, Rayna Fahey, Anthony Magen, Men in Suits, Projector Obscura, Roarawar-feartata-collective, Neil Thomas and Cye Wood. Works included interactive maps in each of the Platform cabinets with radio sound tours, live performance actions, self publishing, and general artistic antics designed to get people excited and involved.

For full details documentation, free zines and interventionist downloads, visit the Interventionist Guide.

ALY AITKEN

2009-10-28T14:40:00.000+11:00

"My work is always about running away. Most recently, my aim has been to evoke the hidden spaces of the psychological boltholes we build for ourselves, and the escape tunnels we use to reach them. The creatures I build are inhabitants of a fabricated world; a world crafted from the in between twilight spaces, cobbled together with bits and pieces of reality. They belong to a landscape in limbo; hybrid things, a mongrel mix of Art, human, animal and vegetable. My installations are riddled with absence and longing and try to recreate the secret places where everything is strange but oddly familiar. The current works are constructed from found objects, left-over things and fabric oddments, layered and reassembled. The forms are modeled using hundreds of tiny seams/scars - almost to the extent that the scar tissue becomes the sculptural medium."

Aly Aitken recently completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) at RMIT. Exhibition highlights shortlisting for the Siemens Scholarship and Blindside's Debut 5, inclusion in Craft Victoria's Fresh! 2008 and The Sustainability Festival 2009. Aly also won the Entrepreneur Motivator Award, 2008.

MADDIE SHARROCK

2009-10-28T11:07:00.002+11:00

Maddie Sharrock
Untitled
false wall, convex & concave mirrors
Variable dimensions
© 2009

Like Yayoi Kusama’s Peep Shop/Endless Love Show (1966), Untitled intends to investigate the act of staring. By replacing the windows of the Sample cabinet with a white wall and strategically affixing two squared mirrors - one concave and the other convex, which hold at each centre a peephole - the viewer is invited to peer into two darkened spaces. When they do, they will feel nothing but a light breath of air on their eye.

Sharrock's Untitled is an investigation into subjective perception, using ingredients such as darkness, light and mirrors to heighten the viewer’s awareness of their bodily senses and proximities. The work's engagement with the viewer is subtle and aims to quietly ‘nudge’ the limitations of perception.

Maddie is currently studying Sculpture and Spatial Practice at the VCA, and has previously exhibited as part of the Victoria Harbour Young Artists Initiative at Docklands.

POLLY DEDMAN

2009-10-28T11:06:00.002+11:00

Polly Dedman
The Gap
hand drawn animation still (detail)
installation with DVD, looped, colour, 35:45 minutes
© 2009

The Gap is an animated split-screen panorama, which explores imaginary landscapes both above and below ground. As part of a work in progress, these landscapes will ultimately create the backdrop to the story of an individual lost 'below' and map a journey passing through time, space, light, darkness, sound, silence and the forgotten places in between.

Polly Dedman is an illustrator and animator with a practice based in pencil drawings, printmaking and collage. Her work has been printed in local magazines, fashion journals and featured on limited edition t-shirts and various online media. Polly has participated in numerous group shows and collaborations both local (Grey Matters, CINCH, Fat Loves Art) and international (Mail Me Art, London and Greetings From…, Tokyo). Polly recently completed an animation for the community group Project Respect, highlighting human rights violations and the human trafficking industry in Australia. Her animation The Gap is a work in progress funded by the City Of Melbourne Young Artist's Grant 2009 and is scheduled for completion in early 2010.

JULIE SHIELS

2009-09-29T12:12:00.000+10:00

Julie Shiels
Rubbish Theory
Flocked plaster cast packaging
Variable dimensions
Photos courtesy of John Brash
© 2009

At the beginning of 2006, I picked up the casing of a strange looking object that had been dropped on the pavement between the sex shop and the local hardware in St Kilda. It wasn’t the packaging that interested me but the empty space that was left after an object had been consumed. This single act turned out to be the catalyst for a collection of other plastic packages that held more mundane objects: toys, office supplies, hardware stuff. I then started plaster casting the empty spaces in the packaging and flocking them in luminescent colours. I produced hundreds of these objects and attached them directly to the wall in patterns that suggested three-dimensional wallpaper in a site-specific installation called Flock.

Rubbish Theory extends and relocates this work into the Platform display cases that were once the advertising space for a now defunct department store. Each window will be hung to suggest the typologies of a department store such as kitchenware, bathroom and menswear. The new work will explore some of Michael Thompson’s ideas from Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value, which is an investigation of material culture in relation to circulation and scarcity, transience and durability and how changing tastes affect the meaning and value of objects.

Each display window has a different pattern: patterns of use that reference products that could have been sold in the now defunct department store: computer gear, toys, confection, etc. Other arrangements, mostly crowded, suggest movement and echo the way people pass through the arcade. Apart from being a mad critique of mass production and the era of the $2 dollar shop this work explores the ideas of material culture and asks questions about what objects will survive and become meaningful beyond their looming use by date. How do changing tastes affect the meaning and value of an object? How will this stuff be viewed in twenty years time? Will we laugh about the old technologies and the crap that filled our lives or will some of these objects have a new meanings and significance? The same question could be asked about this artwork.

Julie Shiels makes work for the gallery and public space, including the web. Her practice includes installation and photography but she also stencils discarded furniture in the street with quotes, truisms and stories. Julie has had two solo shows this year. Sleeper at Monash Gallery of Art, which included a photographic installation and pyjamas made from fabric salvaged from abandoned mattresses. Small Packages at Sophie Gannon Gallery was about the ingenuity and hidden beauty of contemporary industrial processes and the nature of obsolescence inherent in mass consumption. Julie teaches in the Art and Public Spaces post-graduate program at RMIT. For more about Julie Shiel’s work visit: City Traces

On show at Platform from 1 – 25 September 2009

REBECCA DELANGE & ALEISHA BODDENBERG

2009-09-29T11:05:00.002+10:00

Rebecca Delange & Alyshia Boddenberg
Things From The Edges (installation details)
variable dimensions
soil, feathers, string, wood, paint, sequins, glitter & other materials
©2009

Things From the Edges is an experimental installation work, consisting of a series of relationships and dialogues between objects, materials and ideas. Alyshia Boddenberg and Rebecca Delange have teamed up to collaborate on their shared explorations into ideas pertaining to growth, excess and mutation. Detritus from the streets, artefacts from dreams, unconscious manifestations, things glimpsed in peripheral vision, denied fears and buried moments are articulated in their sculptural assemblages.

In the depths of Melbourne, viewers will be able to observe these elusive forms. Materials such as wood scraps, office supplies, fabric, plastic, paper, carpet, tape rope, household items, string, dirt, clay, feathers, glitter and paint are combined to create work that is simultaneously compelling, repulsive and optimistic. The artists will both utilise the Vitrine cabinet to create a dialogue between two practices to form a semi-abstract installation as they converge.

Rebecca Delange’s work explores ideas of uncomfortableness, disgust, waste and optimism. She is interested in exploring how immaterial things, such as emotions, memories, ideas and attitudes, can actually manifest into three-dimensional forms and exist tangibly in our reality. Delange has recently completed her Honours year at the VCA and has exhibited in a wide range of group and solo exhibitions, including Seventh Gallery, 45 Downstairs, The Counihan Gallery and First Site. She won the Ephemeral Award at the Wangaratta Sculpture Biennale in March 2008.

Alyshia Boddenberg’s work explores the transition of mundane, average, unassuming objects into seductive and dangerous formations that, gaining strength on mass, form a terrain entirely unto themselves. Boddenberg has recently completed her Honours year at the VCA. She was awarded The Casama Group Award, 2008, was short listed for the Dowd Travelling Scholarship, 2008, and selected to participate in The Filippo Raphael Fresh! exhibition at Craft Victoria in 2008.

On show at Vitrine from 1 – 25 September 2009

AARON COOPER & BEN TARANTO

2009-09-29T11:03:00.001+10:00

Aaron Cooper & Ben Taranto
Subterranean Fouling
Polyurethene silicon & polyurethene foam
(installation detail)
2.4m x 1.2m x 65cm
Photo courtesy of the artists
© 2009

Subterranean Fouling is a reworking of Biologically Foul – a site-specific installation exhibited as part of the Victoria Harbour Young Artists Initiative at Docklands and presented earlier this year. ‘Biological Fouling’ is a term used to describe the accretion of naturally growing, aquatic organisms upon submerged human-made structures. It is the cause of extensive corrosion to underwater assets and an enormous fiscal threat to marine industries.

Cooper and Taranto simulate fouling of architectural space by creating artificial mussels and barnacles that ‘grow’ inside the Sample cabinet. It entertains the possibility that if current sea levels rise, as we are constantly led to believe, that the Degraves Street Subway could become prime space for the next wave of urban biological fouling.

Aaron Cooper and Ben Taranto are currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Victorian College the Arts majoring in sculpture and spatial practice. Working in collaboration they use sculpture and installation as a means to explore tensions arising between the organic and synthetic, urban and natural, aquatic and terrestrial realms.

Curated by Laura Castagnini
On show at Sample from 1 – 25 September 2009

SIMON O'CARRIGAN

2009-09-29T09:07:00.000+10:00

Simon O'Carrigan
Terminal
Hand drawn animation still
DVD, looped, colour, sound, 4:15 Minutes
© 2009

The root origin of the word terminal is terminus, the end of a line. A terminal is also an external computer station that allows input to an internal network. A terminal is a point of connection that closes the loop of an electric circuit. A terminal disease is that which is predicted to lead to death, especially slowly. A terminal velocity denotes the constant speed an object reaches when the resistance of the medium through which it falls prevents further acceleration.

In this work, Terminal, we see the daily life of a worker in a modern day 'electronic plantation'. Falling through his viscous life, a terminal velocity is reached. Repetitive tasks and repetitive days keep him on a loop, his position being a terminal, closing the loop of his office network circuit. The worker is slowly reaching the end of the line, a terminus at which he'll not burn out, just fade away.

Simon O'Carrigan works across animation, collage and painting and has exhibited in various galleries around Melbourne since 2005. Simon’s work has been included in Hatched National Graduate exhibition at PICA, and earned him the NAVA Ignition Award. His animations have been commissioned for the City Museum in Melbourne, screened in Taiwan, Canberra Short Film Festival, Brisbane International Animation Festival, This Is Not Art's Electrofringe, and included in various DVD zine compilations by Tape Projects.

On show at Frame from 1 – 25 September 2009

MISSTER DEAN & MS TEEN

2009-09-29T08:04:00.000+10:00

Misster Dean and Ms Teen
Photobooth Project
Photobooth photography composite (detail)
Complete set taken 1999-2009
© 2009

Photo booths are found in bars, airports, train stations, malls, games arcades and walkways around the world. They are the everyday person’s photographic studio and a portal in which one enters to become a model, actor, documentary photographer or creative artist. In 1999 we decided to make the photo booth our public art laboratory and made a pact to take one photo booth strip every week for five years. As the weeks turned into years, we continued to enter photo booths all over the world and experimented with everything from traditional portraiture to stop motion animation; we created comic strips, puppet shows, and installation art works. We were often challenged with inconsistent lighting and poor quality developing chemicals and always restricted by the three metronomic seconds between each shot and the limited depth of field. The Photobooth Project is an interactive touring exhibition and an installation that invites the public to produce their own photo booth strip.

Misster Dean met Ms Teen at a Brisbane film school in 1993 but it wasn’t until they reunited in London in 1999 that they began working together. Their first collaboration was a queer super-8 film called Bunnygirl, which travelled international festival circuits and marked the start of The Photobooth Project. Moving to New York in 2000, the artists created another super-8 film, Mama Simmy’s Roadtrip. This cult film screened with success in queer film festivals in New York, London, Berlin and Sydney. On their return to Australia, they produced Peripheral Vision, a time-based film installation for St Kilda Film Festival and produced several more super-8 films. Misster Dean made a short film Katfite, which was selected for MUFF in 2004 and The Photobooth Project was also completed in the same year. The following year, Misster Dean & Ms Teen were invited to participate in a travelling exhibition through Europe. Currently residing in Melbourne, Misster Dean and Ms Teen continue to collaborate on queer time-based installations and short films.

On show at Majorca from 1 – 25 September 2009
Majorca Building is located on the corner Centre Place & Flinders Lane, Melbourne

THE SEPTEMBER SHOWS

2009-09-16T16:54:00.003+10:00

The September Shows are closing on Friday 25 September!

Featuring: Julie Shiels, Alyshia Boddenberg & Rebecca Delange, Simon O'Carrigan, Aaron Cooper & Ben Tarano, Misster Dean & Ms Teen.

DELL STEWART

2009-08-20T20:01:00.005+10:00

Dell Stewart
Elementary
(upper) acrylic & resin on wood
(lower) knitted cotton
variable dimensions
© 2009

Recently working with sculpture, drawing, animation and installation, Dell Stewart's work features recurring motifs and symbols in a range of media, creating a personal symbolism, suggestive of memory and elementary connections. These sculptural works draw loose connections, isolated objects linked by an unexplained gravitational attraction.

Dell Stewart has organised and participated in numerous solo and collaborative exhibitions, working with sculpture, drawing, animation and installation. Most recently she has exhibited at Bus and Utopian Slumps in Melbourne, Project(or) in Rotterdam and Takt Gallery in Berlin.

On show at Platform throughout August.

ADAM CRUICKSHANK

2009-08-20T19:54:00.005+10:00

Adam Cruickshank
Enhanced Awareness Campaign
Discarded trophy pieces and assorted consumer detritus
variable dimensions
© 2009

Enhanced Awareness Campaign consists of a number of hybrid, bastardized trophies. Post-ironic religious icons destined to be sacrificed to the gods of ASX and NASDAQ or awards for those who excel in the implementation of enhanced consumer enabling, customer loyalty programs and the architecture of brands? Everything is AWESOME with these AMAZING PRIZES.

Adam Cruickshank went to the Queensland College of Art in the early 1990s and – after a period of exhibiting locally – worked in magazine art direction until 2007 when he restarted his dedication to fine art practice. His work ranges through sculptural installation, collaboration, image-making and sound. He has exhibited in Europe and Australia in various public spaces and galleries including TCB, Utopian Slumps, and Bus.

On show at Platform throughout August.

CARLY FISCHER

2009-08-20T19:50:00.004+10:00

Carly Fischer
You took the words right out of my mouth
paper, foamcore and adhesives
variable dimensions
© 2009

You took the words right out of my mouth explores the idea that in an increasingly globalised contemporary context, where our environment is continually replicated, remixed and commodified, we have nothing left to say. In her installation, Fischer explores Berlin as a model environment where even dysfunction has been commodified. Fischer explores this idea of reproduction and it’s resultant expectation by creating idealised paper models of destruction that mimic the perfection of postcards. In Fischer’s installation, the emptiness of the objects and the title reflect on the tenuous situation of the individual whose intent is insecure; caught in between critiquing this system of reproduction and commodification while at the same time playing an active part in its construction.

Carly Fischer is a Berlin-based visual artist, originally from Melbourne. Her work spans sculpture, installation, photography and social research and seeks to question normative structures and representations that are produced and readily accepted in an increasingly globalised world. Much of her work deals with replicating elements from surrounding urban environments as paper models. This replication attempts to both mimic and mock the processes of hyper-efficiency and hyper-production, which surround her, as well as comment on contemporary expectations of perfection.

On show at Platform throughout August.

ANNIKA KOOPS

2009-08-20T19:44:00.003+10:00

Annika Koops
Mixed Mythologies
(upper) acrylic on canvas
(lower detail) sgraffito with black acrylic on board
70cm x 50cm
© 2009

Mixed Mythologies re-visions historical 16th and 17th century paintings as the polygonal mesh used to create 3D computer models. The images present subjects characteristic of the period: vanitas, still lifes and religious icons. However these images are not generated by computer, but by hand, oscilating between old and new technology. There is an inherent paradox to these images, a cyclical redundancy which explores concepts relating to homogenization. The work simultaneously implies the ephemeral and eternal. This creates temporal conflict, in which the outcome is stasis.

Annika Koops works primarily with painting and digital photography. In 2007 she was the recipient of the Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch Traveling Fellowship. Annika currently works in Melbourne where she has been involved in group and solo projects at various galleries and ARI’s. Annika’s work is held in public and private collections in Australia and she has exhibited widely nationally and internationally.

On show at Platform throughout August.

RACHAEL HOOPER

2009-08-20T19:35:00.007+10:00

Rachael Hooper
(upper) One Landscape
(lower detail) One Ham Sandwich
Acrylic on Paper
complete set 220 cm x 90 cm
© 2009

You could take a photo (it lasts longer, so they say). Or on the other hand you could rent a cold studio, buy some paint, tape up some paper, mix the paint and brush it on. Then you could mix it again, put some water with it or some curious medium and apply it again. Wipe it off, spray some water, paint it back on, stand back, tilt your head and contemplate.
Then do it all over again
and again.
Until you get what we’ve all seen before...
A landscape and a ham sandwich.

Rachael Hooper has exhibited in artist run spaces and galleries in Melbourne and Darwin. She has been short-listed for several prizes including the Brett Whiteley Traveling Scholarship, and won the Albany Art Prize in 2008.

On show at Platform throughout August.

NATASHA FRISCH

2009-08-20T19:22:00.005+10:00

Natasha Frisch
Between you and me
tracing paper, double sided tape
240cm x 100 cm
© 2009

Between you and me is inspired by tales of suburban myth and the seedier aspects of Australian domesticity, the constructions act as a document of the places where human behavior has altered the space for better or for worse, empty situations which via stillness and spatial displacement allow for a slippage between the real and unreal.

Natasha Frisch is a Melbourne-based artist who works with modest materials, such as paper and tape to construct installations and sculptures that emulate sites and objects from the every day. Natasha completed her Bachelor of Arts (Media Arts) - Honours at RMIT in 1997 and since this time she has exhibited extensively throughout Melbourne art spaces. She is represented by Dianne Tanzer Gallery.

On show at Platform throughout August.

DOMINIC KAVANAGH

2009-08-05T16:49:00.006+10:00

Dominic Kavanagh
Perkins’ Leg
acrylic paint, wood, sticks, sand, mdf board, rope, plants, curtains,
(installation) 400 cm x 150 cm (detail) 50 cm x 30 cm
© 2009

The Myth
A preserved, three and a half metre wooden leg was recently found half buried in desert sands just south of the Moroccan city, Tangier. Due to a series of severe desert storms, much of the covering sand had been removed, exposing the leg for the first time in what is believed to be around 1650 years. There has been much controversy over the leg’s origin. Mobile in design and consisting of several carved, interlocking pieces, many baffled archaeologists have suggested the leg functioned as a component to a large, primitive, mechanical farming device. Professor Perkins, who discovered the leg, believes its origin to be far more significant. Perkins speculates that the remnants belonged to an apparent creature of mythical renown: Nemorosus Aroxus (Wooden Horror).

Perkins’ Leg is the fantastical discovery of a large limb belonging to an unknown creature. Constructed almost entirely from wood, the artefact is half buried in sand in order to portray the desert scene of its apparent discovery and its display is designed to provoke curiosity about its origin. This kind of installation is reminiscent of ‘nature’ displays in museums and theme parks. Fake environments like these are created in a variety of ways to depict and inspire speculation about the life of the subjects placed within them. I want to create my own myth surrounding the existence of a supposed artefact or relic. In this case, everything has been fabricated, from the relic itself, to the brief publication of its history that accompanies it.

Dominc Kavanagh graduated with first class honours from the University of Newcastle before moving to Melbourne in early 2007 to pursue an art career. Dominic held his first Melbourne solo show, The Rebellious Garden Shed, at Seventh Gallery, Fitzroy in 2008. He received the Jennie Thomas Traveling Artists Scholarship in 2004, and was short-listed for the Brett Whitley Traveling Artists Scholarship in 2003 and 2004. Dominic is currently completing a Master of Fine Art degree at Monash University.

On show at Vitrine throughout August.

CLAIRE GALLAGHER

2009-08-05T16:43:00.006+10:00

Claire Gallagher
Absence of the Inner
glass tank, potted plants, taxidermy birds, taxidermy fox, animal bones, wire, string, flouro tubes, dirt
(upper) 200 cm x 90 cm
(lower detail) variable dimensions
© 2009

An empty vitrine, void of material matter other than hot air, suggests suffocation. It alludes to the fate of the subject inside suffering a slow death. Paradoxically, hot sticky air can also generate life, such as within a hot house. With these ideas in mind, Claire Gallagher surrounds an empty glass vitrine with a mix of living pot plants and taxidermied animals. The environment she creates is oddly eerie and monstrous, yet at the same time illustrates a continuation of life. Absence of the Inner suggests that the human desire to control, manipulate and contain the living may originate in an underlying fear of a rampant, uncontrollable nature.

Claire Gallagher is currently completing her Honours degree in Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts and works across sculpture and installation to create environments that explore the tensions and parallels between the living and the dead, the artificial and the natural.

This is the second Sample show to be curated by Laura Castagnini as part of her 2009 Curator in Residence with Platform.

On show at Sample throughout August.

CHRONOX

2009-08-05T16:35:00.005+10:00

Chronox
toothpicks, mdf board, wire, mirrors, dvd players, screens
(150 x 100 cm)
© 2009

Chronox is an ongoing investigation of time, space and perception, incorporating installation, performance and publications in a variety of media. Further information and archival documents can be found online at Chronox.

Sadly, this will be the last installation by Tape Projects as part of their 2009 Frame Residency at Platform. Tape Projects seeks to promote the wealth of talented and underrepresented young and emerging artists in Melbourne and throughout Australia, who practice media art and hybrid forms not necessarily suited to the traditional gallery format. As young and emerging artists ourselves, we believe in supporting our highly skilled community by creating new opportunities for the screening and showcasing of accomplished experimental art.

Tape Projects is comprised of the following individuals: Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, Sunday Ganim, Tanja Milbourne, Eugenia Lim, Michael Prior, Zoe Scoglio, Jessie Scott, Lee Anantawat and Nic Whyte. For more information about Tape Projects visit their website.

On show in Frame throughout August

CAROLINE IERODIACONOU

2009-08-04T16:28:00.003+10:00

Caroline Ierodiaconou
Role Model
Oil on canvas
150 x 70 cm
© 2009

This exhibition consists of a series of drawings and paintings exploring the homogenisation of culture, beauty and aesthetics, as well as the politics behind this process. The artwork will also explore the subversion of the feminine ideal, which is used to constantly attack a woman’s sense of identity and self.

Caroline is an emerging Melbourne artist, whose powerful figurative pieces are a thought provoking meditation on the times in which we live. Her work often depicts humanity as a fragmented and threatened species, at war with both itself and the rest of nature. There is also a lighter, whimsical side to this artist’s work, representing the vulnerability, foibles and quirks of being human. Since graduating from the Victorian College of Arts in 2002, Caroline has exhibited widely with both group and solo shows in commercial and artist-run galleries. After spending three months in Asia in 2009, in 2010 she is scheduled to return to China with a three-month residency at the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing.

On show throughout August at the Majorca Building entrance on the corner of Centre Place and Flinders Lane Melbourne.

THE AUGUST SHOWS

2009-07-16T18:40:00.004+10:00

Opening Friday 7 August 2009 from 6-8pm
Degraves Street Subway – Melbourne Australia

Featuring:

DELL STEWART
RACHAEL HOOPER
NATASHA FRISCH
CARLY FISCHER
ANNIKA KOOPS
ADAM CRUICKSHANK
in Repeat Repeat at Platform

DOMINIC KAVANAGH at Vitrine
CHRONOX at Frame (the last Tape Projects Residency)
CLAIRE GALLAGHER at Sample (curated by Laura Castagnini)
CAROLINE EIRODIACONOU at Majorca

TOM O'HERN

2009-07-16T18:29:00.008+10:00

Tom O’Hern
Bone Bed
Ink drawings on archive paper
individual works approx. 150 x 90 cm
© 2009

Bone Bed explores key aspects of Melbourne's history by reflecting on the build up of bones and garbage beneath Degraves Lane. This collection of work dually serves as a memento mori as well as a reminder of the often dark and bloody past that underlies our present "peace and prosperity".

Tom O'Hern is a Melbourne-based artist whose work spans illustration, murals, painting, installation and sculpture. Tom has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the University of Tasmania.

JESSIE SCOTT

2009-07-16T18:17:00.003+10:00

Jessie Scott
Gravity Pleasure Switchback
DVD player and screens, lights terrarium, sand, other detritus
(95 x 145 cm) (detail)
© 2009

"Everything must be different from ordinary experience...When a stranger arrives at Coney Island...his eyes tell him he is in a different world – a dream world, perhaps a nightmare world, where all is bizarre and fantastic."
Frederick Thompson, creator of Luna Park, 1904

Shot on a blustery, bleak mid-May Saturday afternoon, the powerful magnetism of memory and place is revealed in this shaky, handy cam footage of a barely-there Coney Island. R&B and the booming of touts steamroll over the emptiness, deliberately and insistently evading the issue of absence. Seagulls circle on the fog engulfed shore, and on the boardwalk, people are dancing.

Even in its vastly reduced state, with assumptions of its closure rife, there is enough magic dust mixed in with the sand and cigarette butts to draw people, in the most unlikely circumstances, into spontaneous and public reverie here. Surprising, awkward, slightly daggy and incredibly awesome at the same time, the Coney Island Dancers revive the simultaneously naive and seamy public space of the boardwalk.

Jessie Scott is a video artist who likes to examine rituals, both public and private. She is a member of Tape Projects. This is the sixth Frame Residency project from Tape Projects.

JON OLDMEADOW

2009-07-16T17:51:00.003+10:00

Jon Oldmeadow
Phantom
Mechanised zoetrope with drawings, lights, motor
100 x 100 cm (detail view)
© 2009

Phantom (noun): an image appearing in a dream or formed in the mind

Phantom explores the fascination that comes from things seen for the first time. This series of drawings is automated by an oversized mechanized zoetrope, an analogue animation device. It takes inspiration from cave drawings found in Arnhem Land thought to be of early explorer Ludwig Leichhardt and his horse. Just as European drawings of eucalyptus trees, which appeared more like European deciduous trees, and kangaroos, which looked more like giant rats, must have seemed strange to Aboriginal people, the Indigenous representation of white people and their animals appear very peculiar, like a phantom.

Jon Oldmeadow completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at Monash University in 2007 and has collaborated as a part of Safari Team since 2006. With Safari Team, Jon has exhibited at VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery, TCB, Next Wave Festival, and Seventh Gallery in Melbourne, Firstdraft Gallery in Sydney, Palazzo Vaj in Italy and WLTWSAETLV in Montreal, Canada.

SARAH BUNTING

2009-07-16T17:36:00.004+10:00

Sarah Bunting
(upper) Diamond Drawing
pencil on paper
(lower) Volcano God/Warrior of The Tephra
digital composite (detail)
© 2009

Imagery drawn from consumer culture and current affairs, combined with the languages of analysis, advertising and corporate-speak, build in layers to create a strange, altar-like construction inside the Vitrine space. Imagining a future civilisation in which objects from our present have been recontextualised as icons of worship, Volcano God/Warrior of the Tephra presents a curious, psychedelic new vision of community and worship. Weapons and costumes recall pagan societies of the past, but the materials used to construct these items are all too clearly from our own present.

Sarah Bunting studied Visual Communication at Monash University and has lectured in Design History and Theory at RMIT TAFE for the past three years. During that time she has taken part in group exhibitions, including No Excuses at FAD Gallery, I Wear My Heart on My Tee at Boroondara Town Hall, and a 2007 Platform show with Dale Nason, Free Meat Economy. Sarah is also involved in performance art, working again with Dale Nason as part of Boutique Irrational and in 2008 formed the all-female performance collective LeoTards. Sarah also self-publishes in zines and on her blog, The Tephra.

BRIDGET RADOMSKI

2009-07-16T17:08:00.004+10:00

Bridget Radomski
(pass) by strangers
c-type photograph
(59.4 x 84 cm)
© 2009

Changing daily, a flow of words combined with facial expressions decorate the Majorca cabinets; illustrating a voyeuristic, humorous and challenging disconnection. A seemingly unrelated word dissolves and re-emerges into an alternate meaning; a language of the street. (pass) by strangers is a collection of captured conversations and photographs by Melbourne based emerging photographic artist Bridget Radomski.

Bridget Radomski has curated and exhibited in Melbourne and Japan. Bridget is a graduate of the Photography Studies College and has a Bachelor of Fine Art (Photography) from RMIT University. She works as a commercial photographer while maintaining a studio practice exploring various mediums and specifically installation pieces.

2010 APPLICATIONS CLOSING SOON

2009-06-29T18:36:00.008+10:00

Deadline for 2010 Artistic Program applications: 5pm Friday 17 July 2009.

Click here to download the application form

NEW DIRECTOR

2009-06-25T13:36:00.003+10:00

Platform is putting the call out for a new director to join the Platform team!

This is a paid, part-time, position helping to manage the organisation and working very closely with the artistic team and board, as well as managing a large network of relationships with artists, art organisations, government and funding bodies, landlords, media and the public.

Click here to download a Position Description

Please note that applications will be closing 10 July 2009.

THE JULY SHOWS

2009-06-25T11:20:00.002+10:00

Opening Friday 3 July 2009 from 6-8pm
Degraves Street Subway Melbourne Australia

Featuring:
TOM O'HERN at Platform
SARAH BUNTING at Vitrine
JESSIE SCOTT at Frame
JON OLDMEADOW at Sample
BRIDGET RADOMSKI at Majorca

NICOLE BREEDON, ACE WAGSTAFF, RACHEL ANG

2009-06-23T17:18:00.009+10:00

Nicole Breedon
Apocalypticism
oil painting on canvas
(detail)
© 2009

The term ‘apocalypse’ is one that has been used extensively in the media and arts of late – the coming to an end of the human species, and the monumental grief and suffering involved. Apocalypse literally translates to ‘lifting of the veil’ and traditionally refers to a disclosure to certain people, something hidden from the majority of humankind. Today, however, the term is often used to refer to the end of the world.

Apocalypticism is a multi-disciplinary work investigating the concepts and themes of secrets, and their relation to ideas such as: truth, government secrecy, conspiracy, mysticism, illusion, magic,reality, revelation, and the metaphysical.

Shifting the normal viewing position of Platform’s glass display cases, the small-scale installations are instead hidden behind various façades, reminiscent of doors or chests. Emerging from the darkness, these installations are made visible via peepholes, manipulating the viewer into the uncomfortable position of voyeur, violating a mysterious and unexplained privacy.

On display in the main Platform cases throughout June.

Nicole Breedon
Sham Orb
plywood cover over clay sculptures
(detail installation view)
Photo courtesy of the artist © 2009

Nicole Breedon employs painting, woodwork, video and installation to explore the esoteric nature of our cosmos and the human psyche – such as the mind, the origins of the universe and creation, the future, time and space. Her work examines mankind's infinitesimal position within the orders of magnitude, in contrast to the richness and depth of the human experience. Aside from various collaborative ventures, duo shows and group exhibitions such as Lateral Investigations at George Paton Gallery, Nicole is currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Art at the VCA. Visit Nicole's website here.

Rachel Ang
Untitled Apocalypticism
medical masks, lamps, beaker, soil, plant
(detail installation view)
© 2009

Rachel Ang's work is concerned with experience, curiosity, discovery – a logic of the senses, which lends itself to the pursuit of freedom and romanticism. Her work is made by bringing seemingly incongruous elements together to explore relations and restraint – a material-based practice resulting in objects that embody the discourse which is their orbit, a kind of play which is both ebullient and scientific in scope. Her creations are constantly being broken down and reconstructed; physical inversions catalyse conceptual ones. Rachel completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) at the VCA in 2008. Rachel has shown work at Platform, Mailbox 141, and the Sydney College of the Arts and more recently showed in Blindside’s To Boldly Go Where Everyone Has Gone Before.

Ace Wagstaff
Untitled Apocalypticism
Rubik's Cube pieces, wires
(detail installation view)
© 2009

Ace Wagstaff is interested in the unknown and theoretical: space, time and love. His practice involves the creation of tributes or homages to these ideals, like three-dimensional sonnets of representation to certain scientific and philosophical theories and concepts. These loving tributes are often realised in a variety of forms including photography, installation, social or relational acts, painting and sculpture. Ace graduated from the VCA with a Bachelor of Fine Art in 2007. He has been included in group exhibitions, social interventions, collaborative projects with other artists, residencies at various schools and solo exhibitions including Aesthetic Laboratory, at George Paton Gallery in 2008.

ANDY HUTSON

2009-06-23T16:44:00.009+10:00

Andy Hutson
Unnatural History
timber, paper, plastic & electronic sculptural installation
(upper: installation view)
(lower: installation details)
© 2009

Unnatural History utilises Vitrine as a site for a miniature diorama, as one would encounter in a museum of natural history – at least, a museum based on the empirical classification of 'historical’ or ‘natural’ artefacts. In this case, the papier-mâché and cardboard artefacts presented highlight the increasing difficulty with which we differentiate between the constructed and natural worlds. Although these objects are archaic in both their construction and content, they represent the shape of things to come – an entirely fabricated nature. Unnatural History critically questions the cultural apparatus through which our perception of ‘the natural’ is formed, and simultaneously alludes to humankind’s own willful and inevitable destruction of the environment.

On display in the Vitrine case throughout June.

Andy Hutson is a Melbourne based artist, working primarily in sculpture and installation. He has exhibited both locally and interstate, and recently completed his Master of Fine Art at VCA. In 2008 he was the recipient of the ANZ Visual Arts Award. Andy is also an active member of Seventh Gallery, an artist run space in Fitzroy, Melbourne.

CHLOE VALLANCE

2009-06-23T15:46:00.006+10:00

Chloe Vallance
Fables of the familiar, the forgotten and the found
pencil drawings on timber, bottles, canvas, paper, paint swatches and pencil shavings
(upper: detail view)
(lower: installation view)
© 2009

The idea of sequencing imagery to suggest an underlying notion of a narration is a recurring theme in my art making. I have become increasingly interested in familiar and forgotten moments of intimate human interaction, as well as the notion of scale – very small drawings allow the imagery to become more personal. I am also fascinated by the simplicity of intimacy experienced by a solitary figure a moment at a time. My current art practice deals with intimate imagery of figures, both together and solitary. When sequenced together, these images allude to the concept of a narration in the form of a storyboard, family album or a film still. The ideas for my drawings stem from my observation of people, close friends and family, and are developed from photographs and life. Fables… will consist of a series of small-scale drawings, paintings, objects and artist books. I am working predominately in coloured pencil on paper, colour swatches, and timber, (pine and MDF board), to create my drawings and objects, while using oils to produce my paintings. The artist books consist of traditional book making materials, such as card, fabric and paper. A lot of my materials, especially the colour swatches and timber, are found objects that relate in terms of scale.

Chloe Vallance is currently studying Fine Art (Honours) Drawing at RMIT. Vallance has held solo shows including: Human Interaction at RMIT First Site Gallery, Narratives of the Personal the Playful and the Peaceful at Seventh Gallery, and Chapter 12 at Brunswick Street Gallery. Chloe has appeared in group exhibitions such as Made in Italy, Phillips House of Fine Art Drawing Prize, and she was one of five winners of the Siemens RMIT Fine Art Undergraduate travel scholarships for 2007.

On display in the Sample case throughout June.

TANJA MILBOURNE

2009-06-22T18:49:00.003+10:00

Tanja Milbourne
Degraves Street Subway
photographic collage
© 2009

This project, specifically designed for the Frame Residency at Platform, takes the existing site as the subject for enquiry. Investigating the conceptual and formal properties of photographic documentation, Degraves Street Subway extends into the temporal realm. The transitory nature of the passageway is evidenced by the fragments and traces of people moving through the subway. The surrounding space is unfolded both architecturally and temporally, implicating the viewer in the act of seeing and inviting questions about the nature of perception.

On display in the Frame case throughout June.

This is the sixth installation from Tape Projects' Frame Residency at Platform.

Tanja Milbourne is a photographer and media artist. Her work incorporates an ongoing investigation into photographic documentation, informed through critical examination of the inherent qualities of representation and perception.

AARON MOODIE

2009-06-05T20:21:00.003+10:00

Aaron Moodie
non particular
pencil drawing on paper
Aaron Moodie
© 2009

non particular consists of a series of large works in ink, pen and pencil on paper, which explore social and mental space, the modern world and the interaction between them. I spend a lot of time inside my head, and use my work as a way to document and express the thoughts and feelings that are generated as a result.

On display in the Majorca cases on Centre Place Melbourne throughout June.

Aaron Moodie is a Melbourne based graphic designer. He likes making things and trying to comprehend infinity. This is his first ever exhibition.

THE JUNE SHOWS

2009-06-03T11:03:00.002+10:00

THE JUNE SHOWS
Opening 6-8pm Friday 5 June 2009
Degraves Street Subway Melbourne

Featuring:

Nicole Breedon, Rachel Ang & Ace Wagstaff (Platform)
Andy Hutson (Vitrine)
Tanja Milbourne (Frame)
Choe Vallance (Sample)
Aaron Moddie (Majorca)

KATE McINTYRE

2009-05-13T15:50:00.002+10:00

Kate McIntyre
Growth
drawing, paper, chrome vinyl
(installation detail)
© 2009

Kate McIntyre is rendering an improbable growth down beneath Flinders Street, toying with a contested underground space and unravelling an argument of territory between urban and natural development.

McIntyre is a New Zealand artist recently relocated to Melbourne. She creates installations that draw forth a potential hidden history, future or present from the banalities of a space, allowing the viewer to rethink the situations in which we are surrounded. In the cabinets of Platform , McIntyre is documenting a creeping expansion that seems to be breaking through the structures of its environment, questioning the usual patterns of construction and growth. McIntyre works with man-made and artificial materials to construct her scenarios, using surfaces and motifs to emulate space and form, suggestively fabricating architectural creations, inversions and destructions. Her work is driven by a fascination with suggested potential, and the improbability of seeing both things at the same time.

Kate McIntyre is a New Zealand artist recently relocated to Melbourne. Along with graduating from the University of Canterbury’s Sculpture Studio in 2005, McIntyre has exhibited her work extensively in Christchurch, as well as in Auckland, and Kurashiki, Japan as part of a sculptural exchange. She has also acted on the Board of Trustees for Christchurch’s HSP Gallery, and adapted ideas from her practice into the production design for several short films. Recently McIntyre has shown in the Physics Room Gallery’s public art site in Christchurch, The Kiosk, and held a solo show, Lost in Space, at HSP Gallery.

SUE-CHING LASCELLES

2009-05-13T15:43:00.003+10:00

Sue-Ching Lascelles
I'm Lichen You a Lot
felt, cotton, polysheets
(installation detail)
© 2009

Our rapidly developing society continues to blur the distinction between Science and Nature. In petri dishes all over the world, nature is being ‘re-designed’ for both beneficial and destructive ends. I’m Lichen You a Lot will be the most beautiful felt fungal disease to infect the city of Melbourne. Thousands of tiny felt lichen spanning many species, both real and invented, will create a saturating composition of ‘artificial nature’. Painstakingly categorised according to colour and form, these curious objects will be overwhelming in mass yet fascinating in detail. Intricately crafted from felt, this soft sculpture installation will appeal to the distant onlooker as a whimsical explosion of colour and composition whilst rewarding the observant viewer with a deeper understanding of the forces at play in the work. I’m Lichen You a Lot is an attempt to challenge our increasingly confused notion of natural beauty, changing the city’s landscape with an injection of beautiful and fragile synthesised nature within the subway.

Sue-Ching Lascelles is a Brisbane-based textile artist specialising in the creation of everyday objects from felt. Her collections of soft sculptures are based on the perception and memory of childhood. Inspired by a playful, childlike vision of the world around us, she rejects so-called ‘grown-up’ forms of aesthetic naturalism. There is a keen sense of novelty that resonates in her desire to transform the banal into the fantastical. Sue-Ching is presently artist-in-residence at Juggler’s Art Space in Fortitude Valley, Queensland.

GEORGIA GILLARD

2009-05-13T14:59:00.000+10:00

"To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt."
Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1977

These photographs directly explore rural and urban landscapes and architecture, which promise much but await change. Mortality, truth and the fragment are themes which reappear in my work and which share a vital relationship with photography. There is an interesting relationship between photographer and subject; the power of the photographer and the vulnerability and mutability of the subject and furthermore, what becomes of the subject once it has become an object or commodity.

Georgia Gillard completed her Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) in 2008 and is currently completing her Honours year at Monash University. Her photography has appeared in various student exhibitions and will be featured in the upcoming publication Stab Your Brother in 2009.

NESS FLETT

2009-05-13T12:06:00.002+10:00

Ness Flett
A Pictorial Essay of Devolution
print on paper
© 2009

A Pictorial Essay of Devolution is an exploration of interference by mankind, and the modern condition of flora and fauna. ‘Devolution’ as a term is widely argued as only appropriate for science fiction, as a species is only able to 'evolve' and does this through natural selection. What then, when humanity interferes so heavily with domestic and captive animals, along with popular garden plants and the effects of introduced species? If it isn't pollinating an orchid to create a completely dependent hybrid that has no means of reproduction, it's inbreeding a domestic pet such that it is almost guaranteed hip dysplasia and physical malfunction. Using medical illustration conventions, these anatomical studies take an investigative, scientific approach, whereas the opposing windows deal with human intervention in a more lyrical manner. The delicate lines and children's story book-style soften the blow of the road kill we interrupted on its daily journey by a bumper bar.

Having trained horses for over a decade, Ness Flett's pursuit of understanding animals and their architecture comes as no surprise. Ness studied painting at RMIT before traveling to Portugal to continue training horses while exhibiting her work on the anatomy and movement of animals. More recently, her work has begun including botanical elements in more detail, and her two separate studies began to collide. Ness has exhibited widely in Melbourne and interstate, and she has been a finalist in the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery Drawing Award, Churchie National Emerging Art Award, Queensland Darebin Acquisitive Art Award. Ness lives in Melbourne and is a member of Artback, the roaming regional artist group.

LOUISE DIBBEN

2009-05-13T12:01:00.002+10:00

Louise A. Dibben
The Hunt
video still
©2009

Regarding cheap special effects and the codex of body language as the most refined communication devices available, Louise Dibben makes video installations that re-position cultural and sexual power struggles through simple actions that are recontextualised.

The Hunt is the fourth Tape Projects Frame Residency work at Platform for 2009. For more information visit the Tape Projects website.