Helen Grogan, SPECIFIC IN-BETWEEN (The choreographic negotiated in six parts)
PART 5. Migrating frames (of space and view)
DISCURSIVE EVENT, 6:00PM, GALLERY 1, WEDNESDAY 12 NOVEMBER
Katie Lee, Bridie Lunney and Sandra Parker each discuss their approaches to embodiment, movement and absence. These presentations open discussion for the specific ontologies of bodies emerging within the artist’s recent projects and reseach. This simply structure of three distinct presentations is followed by open discussion with the artists, Helen Grogan and Hannah Mathews. This open discussion additional considers recent shifts in curatorial contexts for performance and sculpture. Gwenneth Boelens and Helen Grogan contribute a text on their work Choreography (For Gallery2, ACCA), 2014 that is installed in the Framed Movements exhibition.
Migrating frames (of space and view) ONLINE CONTRIBUTIONS
GWENNETH BOELENS AND HELEN GROGAN
Gwenneth Boelens and Helen Grogan, Writing on ‘Choreography (For Gallery2, ACCA), 2014’. This text piece was developed from and for the artists’ co-authored work Choreography (For Gallery2, ACCA), 2014, exhibited in Gallery 2, ACCA for Framed Movements.
PARTICIPANTS AND PRACTICES
Working with installation and sculptural form, Katie Lee’s practice is an exploration of the physical and psychological consequences of the built environment and our negotiations within it. Her materials — wood, rubber, steel, interrupted space, light, video, performative gesture, repetition, resistance, elasticity, fixed form — may be arranged sparsely, inducing agoraphobic sensations, or at other times they exhaust the available space, airlessly, suffocatingly. These affects, these sensations, act as the husk for the political context of the work, for underneath sit larger questions about governance, control, the arrangement and restrictions of public space, of accepted architectural design, of legislation, and of dominance.
Born in Tasmania, where she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1998, Katie Lee has lived and worked in Melbourne since 2000. Katie has since completed a Postgraduate Diploma of Education in 2001, Honours in Fine Art in 2004 and a Master of Arts in 2009 at RMIT, while regularly exhibiting both in Melbourne and overseas. Katie has spent time in Vietnam where she worked and exhibited independently in 2003/4 and returned as a resident artist with Asialink in 2007. She teaches in the Sculpture department and the Architecture and Design Foundation Studies program at RMIT.
Bridie Lunney develops her works intuitively, and in relation to the site of presentation, engaging the given context, physical conditions and materials. Combining practices of sculpture, jewellery and durational performance, Lunney acknowledges the body as a conduit between our emotional and psychological selves and the physical world. Performative and sculptural gestures in the works suggest psychological shifts and a reconfiguration of hierarchical relationships between architectural space, objects and the body. These altered relationships suggest both small rebellions in our prescribed choreography of the urban environment and the poetic mimicry of internal psychological spaces.
Her recent exhibitions include There is a way, if we want, into everything, MAF project space for Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2014; There are these moments Studio 12 Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2014; Arcadian Revery for ‘White Night’, Queen Victoria Gardens, Melbourne, 2014; This Endless Becoming for ‘Melbourne Now’, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2013-14; Drawing Weight for ‘30 Ways with Time and Space’, Performance Space, Sydney, 2014; Propositions in collaboration with Torie Nimmervoll at Gertrude Contemporary, 2013; Place of Assembly, Melbourne International Arts Festival, 2012; A Condition of Change, Sarah Scout, Melbourne, 2011; Suspension Test, Conical, Melbourne, 2011; Non-Negotiable, Project Space, 2010; Risk Potential, Die Ecke, Santiago, Chile 2010; and, Once more with Feeling, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, 2009.
She is currently teaching Contemporary Practice, Sculpture and Drawing at Monash Art, Design and Architecture and is a Gertrude Contemporary Resident Artist for 2013-2015.
Sandra Parker’s current practice investigates the viewer’s physical, affective and sensory interaction and engagement with multi-disciplinary installation and performance. Exploring how physical proximity, modes of figuration, representation and interpretation create qualities of experience, Parker’s work investigates ways in which movement, sound, video and text can come together to shape and manipulate perception.
Sandra Parker is an interdisciplinary artist from Melbourne, Australia. She holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne, a Master of Choreography and Bachelor of Education with major studies in dance and drama. Sandra’s projects combine movement, video, sound and text in works for gallery installation as well as site-specific locations and traditional theatre contexts. Current projects include the interactive installation Three Angles, for the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia; Live View, a performance work combining movement and bi-aural sound in headphones; and, a series of videos and live performance Three Frames, Aux Performance Space, Vox Populi, Philadelphia. Recent works include: Playhouse, Guandong Modern Dance Company, Guangzhou, China, 2009; Out of Light, Sandra Parker Dance, Melbourne, Australia, 2009; Liu Bin on the wall, a video and drawing installation created during a Red Gate Gallery residency supported by the Australia China Council, Beijing, China, 2009; Document, Dancehouse, Housemate residency, Melbourne, Australia, 2011; Transit, Sandra Parker Dance, 2010; Melbourne Festival, Melbourne, Australia, 2012; Faits d’hiver, Paris, France, 2013; and, The Recording, Dance Massive, Melbourne, Australia, 2013. Sandra was awarded the Australia Council for the Arts Dance Board Fellowship for 2012 and 2013. Her works have been seen in Australia, Germany, Portugal, France, China and the US.
Gwenneth Boelens (Soest, NL, 1980. Lives and works in Amsterdam), graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in Den Hague and was a resident artist at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in 2006-2007. Gwenneth Boelens’ practice comprises photography and sculpture, as well as performative and filmic works. Her work is a synthesis of memory, landscape and process. National and international exhibitions from the past years include Riveted, Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam (NL), 2014; Events Unwitnessed, Basis, Frankfurt (DE), 2013; Biennale Online, Artplus (www), 2013; Autumn of Modernism, De Vleeshal, Middelburg (NL), 2012; A Dutch Landscape, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (ES), 2012; The Sound of Downloading Makes Me Want to Upload, Sprengel Museum, Hannover (DE), 2011; and, Performative Structures – New Existentialism, KURATOR Gebert Stiftung für Kultur, Rapperswil-Jona (CH), 2010. Recently her first artist book In Two Minds was published by Roma Publications.
Helen Grogan’s practice activates and articulates space through sculptural, photographic, filmic and performative means. With a particular focus on what is already here and already happening, Grogan’s works seek an embodied attention to the presence and materiality of our surroundings. Informed by studies in philosophy and choreography, viewing is understood as a temporal and spatial activity; observation and thought is an unfolding process that is always moving. Grogan applies expanded choreographic systems and strategies to works presented predominantly within a visual arts context.
Helen Grogan’s recent solo projects include: Three Performative Structures for Slopes, Slopes, Melbourne, 2014; Specific Applications for This Space (an obituary), Place of Assembly, Melbourne International Arts Festival, 2012. Selected group exhibitions include: Framed Movements, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria International; If This Exhibition Where a Text, Slopes, Melbourne; Interpreting Variable Arrangements, KULTURHUSET, Stockholm; Shelley Lasica’s VIANNE AGAIN, MADA, Monash University, Melbourne; What Moves Us, La Mecedora Collective, Amsterdam/Mexico City; Belinner Zimmer, Kontext Festival, Berlin; South Project Space/Open Studios, Rijksakademie, Amsterdam; We Are Hidden And We Can See You, We Are Hidden And You Can See Us, Gertrude Contemporary. In addition to and as an extension of her artistic practice, Grogan has developed curatorial and research projects including: SPECIFIC IN-BETWEEN (The choreographic negotiated in six parts), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; Open Archive Project Space (in co-direction with Jared Davis), Melbourne; Feedback Projected (Proposals Towards an Exhibition), Gertrude Contemporary, CHOREOGRAPHY AND RELATED THINKING (in co-direction with Shelley Lasica). Grogan initially studied Philosophy and Contemporary Dance concurrently at Deakin University then The City University of New York. From 2001-2005 she continued this research at The School For New Dance Development, Amsterdam School for The Arts.