BEYOND THE VEIL
30 May - 16 Jun 2018
Opening Night | Thursday 31 May, 6pm–8pm + performance by Josh Hook and ritual by Paulina Hupe
Curated by Jake Treacy
Public Program | Saturday 9 June, 2pm
Meet | FROM Melbourne General Cemetery, Melbourne General Cemetery, Elvis Monument TO BLINDSIDE, Room 14, Level 7, 37 Swanston Street
Duration| 45-60 minutes
Join curator Jake Treacy as he navigates sites of the city through a walking floor talk. Part lecture, part manifesto, part thesis, part happening, part demonstration, part action - this talk aims to take art to the streets, bridging it from the gallery, where it may be accessed by all. As part of the exhibition Beyond the Veil, it seeks to formulate discourse around art as an everyday therapy, as a tool that we may use to manifest better versions of ourselves. Throughout the public program, a sculpture will be processioned, articulating the numinous quality of art beyond the gallery.
Anastasia Booth, Daniel Gawronski, Guy Grabowsky, Josh Hook, Paulina Hupe, Cristal Johnson, Tessy King, Hernan Lopera, Diego Ramirez, Britt Salt, Michele Sierra, Jake Treacy.
Beyond The Veil seeks to expand and transform the perceptions, traditions and experiences of the white cube as an exhibition model. Through architectural interventions, site specific responses, public programs, newly commissioned works as well as renewed curatorial vision upon existing works, 12 contemporary artists altogether conjure a liminal experience within BLINDSIDE.
Calling upon all that is unseen, peripheral, veiled and at the threshold of our collective blind sides, Beyond The Veil constructs and chances ambiguous moments often encountered within ceremonial and daily ritual, performing the numinous quality of art. When in a liminal state one is considered in flux – neither here nor there, yet betwixt and between – and so the gallery space becomes a fertile place for transformation.
As one enters BLINDSIDE they are greeted with their mirror self; a ghost sculpture collapses upon itself; a monumental wall becomes a gateway between interior and exterior worlds; punctured vessels carry and seep energy from other times and places; the contemporary figure of the witch demolishes and rebuilds gender hierarchies; a corner of reflective discs perpetually shifts architecture; Jungian archetypes glow, smoke and smoulder; and a live eclipse interrogates colonial forecasts. All the while the internal structure of the gallery becomes a haunting acoustic, where a spirit box channels voices beyond the walls.
On the opening night a performance by Josh Hook and a ritual by Paulina Hupe will take place, piercing and puncturing the veils between worlds.
Josh Hook | The Perfect Wall, as an architectural intervention, demonstrates the ritual of setting up an ideal blank canvas from which to work, the destruction and break down that can occur, and the eventual rebuilding to begin again. Taking a hammer to puncture the wall, Hook actions the conversation between interior and exterior worlds, underscoring the gallery as a perpetual construction site.
Paulina Hupe | RTU is an intimate, ritualistic performance covering the faces of past and future, drawing upon the present. In this work the female body is a vessel of transcendence, an archetypical carrier for potential and transformation where nature’s Magick lives and dies.
Performance may include nudity. The artist kindly requests that no photography or documentation occurs throughout the duration of the performance.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a curator’s floor-talk in the form of a walking-procession across Melbourne.
IMAGES | Hernan Lopera, Threshold, 2016, Fabric and paraffin wax | Anastasia Booth, Portrait of Scylla 2016, HD video | Britt Salt, Spatial Diffraction, 2018, hand cut vinyl | Guy Grabowsky, Disintegrated Surface, 2018, hand printed c type colour analogue photographic print, 137 x 100cm| Tessy King, Sun Room, 2016, glazed stoneware, lustre, granite, steel, turmeric dyed calico | Michele Sierra, Rasa, 2017, single channel video | Jake Treacy, My Eyes at the Moment of The Apparitions, 2018, etched mirror | Diego Ramirez, When Conquest Swallowed The Sun, 2018, HD projection, round perspex, round lightbox, vinyl, beans | Courtesy the artists.