Ronnie van Hout, YOU!
Exhibition dates: 9 September – 15 October 2020
Exhibition opening: Friday 9 September, 6–8pm
Venue: Front Gallery, Gertrude Contemporary, 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC
Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to present You!, a solo project by Ronnie van Hout. As a leading figure in the Australasian art landscape for over two decades, van Hout has consistently brought into focus the presence of the artist within his practice. Frequently presenting himself within his extensive body of work, van Hout positions himself as the unwitting subject pervasively reappearing as a provocation to the artistic figure. The complexity of van Hout’s particular subversion of self-representation gains traction not through his own immortalisation, but rather, through the artist’s capacity to render himself as almost universal – the everyman inadvertently coopted as icon.
Van Hout has created a new project specifically for the street-facing front gallery of Gertrude Contemporary. Clad in pajamas, van Hout’s sculptural figure stands in the centre of the room, pointing back at the viewer and the street with an almost accusatory menace. Turning the tide on what it might mean to be stared upon, we are implicated in the narrative, indeed, we are somehow at fault and being singled out for this reason. Through this van Hout performs a tangential shift within self-portraiture to cast the viewer as the subject, reprimanding us for looking and returning power to the lone figure in the gallery.
Ronnie van Hout (born Christchurch, New Zealand) lives and works in Melbourne. Selected solo exhibitions include The Dark Pool, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2015); I’ve Seen Things, Dowse Museum of Art, Lower Hut, New Zealand (2012); Bed/Sit, Artspace, Sydney (2008); Ersatz, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany (2005); and the major touring exhibition I’ve Abandoned Me, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, City Gallery, Wellington, Te Manawa, Palmerston North (2003-05).
Ronnie van Hout is represented by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney; Station, Melbourne; Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington; and Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland.
Kate Mitchell, Hypnotised Into Being
Image credit: Kate Mitchell, Hypnotised Into Being, 2016. HD digital video. Courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Chalk Horse, Sydney
Exhibition dates: 9 September – 15 October 2020
Exhibition opening: Friday 9 September, 6–8pm
Venue: Main Gallery, Gertrude Contemporary, 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC
Gertrude Contemporary is pleased to present Hypnotised Into Being, a solo project formed around a recent work of the same title by Sydney-based artist Kate Mitchell. For this work, Mitchell enlisted a hypnotist to induce her into a sub-conscious state and prompt her to respond to a selection of statements that she had earlier provided. Initially approaching the session with a high degree of cynicism, the artist was later astounded that she had indeed been coaxed into a subliminal state. In the work, Mitchell physically enacts various prompts related to art history, critical discourse and her own practice, as if playing a game of charades in a slumberous state.
Other works in this exhibition similarly respond to how a concept of art or its affect might manifest as a physical form, such as the neon works What Thinking About Art Looks Like (2015) and What The Realisation That This Thought Is An Artwork Looks Like (2015), which replicate brain waves.
Consistently imbued with humour, Mitchell’s practice draws attention to the perseverance required to maintain an artistic practice, as well as the repetitious monotony of life more broadly, as succinctly rendered in her work Getting Through It(2012), which will be exhibited in Studio 12.
Kate Mitchell (born Sydney) lives and works in Sydney. Selected solo exhibitions include In Time, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne (2015); Magic Undone, Artspace, Sydney (2012); and Future Fallout, Chalk Horse, Sydney (2014). Selected group exhibitions include Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2012); Contemporary Australia: Women, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2012); The Grip / La Mainmise, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2010); and The Horn of Plenty: excess and reversibility, Para Site, Hong Kong (2009).
Kate Mitchell is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne; and Chalk Horse, Sydney.
Gertrude Contemporary, 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy VIC