It Hangs With Rattlesnakes
and Rubbish

15 February – 27 March 2016

Guest Curated by Alison Kubler

Chantal Fraser

BLINDSIDE is one of the best artist run initiatives in Australia. With a commitment to supporting emerging artists BLINDSIDE also has the vision to connect with the larger community through projects such as PLAY, and the Melbourne Fashion Festival. The 2016 PLAY project looks to the long and illustrious relationship between art and fashion, specifically through the lens of new media. Fashion works with film as a marketing platform and increasingly through creative collaboration. 

Chantal Fraser’s new media work explores identity through clothing, costume and fashion. She skilfully manipulates clothing to create a fluidity of form and cast assumptions aside, deliberately manipulating cultural specificity. The figure may be of Middle Eastern extraction, or perhaps she has an islander heritage? Fraser plays with the tropes of costume to highlight aspects of feminism theories around women and dress, but also to cast light upon the viewer’s own expectations and assumptions. She unsettles stereotypes by playing with ideas to do with traditional adornment, and contemporary culture’s appropriation of these culturally significant modes of dress. She is at once the protagonist and the participant.

Chantal Fraser is a multimedia artist with a BFA (Honours) from Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Her practice engages in pushing the boundaries of adornment through mediums such as installation, performance and digital media. Chantal has exhibited at numerous national institutions including: QUT Art Museum, UQ Art Museum, Museum of Brisbane, and at the Contemporary Pacific Arts Festival, and in international institutions including: La Cite internationale des Arts in France, Les Brassie res in Belgium, Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia, and at Harris Gallery (University of La Verne) inCalifornia USA. In 2015, Chantal was featured in GoMA Q, a survey of Queensland art at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA).

Alison Kubler is a freelance curator and writer with over 20 years experience working as a curator in museums and galleries in Australia, and writing for leading art journals and magazines. She is Associate Curator of the University of Queensland Art Museum, a Board Director of the Museum of Brisbane, and
Co-Director of mc/k art consulting. In 2013, Alison co-authored a major publication with Mitchell Oakley-Smith – Art/Fashion in the Twentieth Century – published by Thames and Hudson UK.

PLAY is part of the VIRGIN AUSTRALIA MELBOURNE FASHION FESTIVAL (VAMFF), Cultural Program Project Series.

See more work by Chantal in a second satellite exhibition for VAMFF at Phillip's Shirts heritage building. 

It Hangs with Rattlesnakes and Rubbish, 2013, Looped Moving Image, 4 mins 15 secs

Image courtesy of the artist.