September Exhibitions 2013

The objects of our everyday; the machine made, the hand crafted, the forced labor, the cheap materials, the mass-produced, the disposable and indestructible forge the reality of our experiences. Through a combination of hand made and found objects, Glass Room explores these props that we all use in the construction of self. We push, we pull, we break, we build, we wash, we reject, and we keep.

A monolithic assemblage - a chromatic array of 24 vinyl records. Two toy soldiers inside a model watchtower. It is winter.

Magnetic tape runs out of the mouth of photographs of Fritz Pfleumer. He’s dreaming of a white Christmas, or perhaps a childhood tapeworm. Around and down through the watchtower, the tape feeds into a reel-to-reel and over the dog-eared edges of the record covers, finally disappearing into mirrored infinity.

“It’s a landscape of the future. It’s as though you used technology to take you off the ground and go like Alice through the looking glass” – John Cage [1939]



Grainger/Edits presents excerpts taken from the works Walking Tune, Two musical Relics of My Mother and

Blithe Bells, composed by Percy Grainger (1882-1961) which have been reconfigured to form a new graphical interpretation, introducing fresh and abstract sonic directives. These revised works challenge performers to decipher new meanings from which to construct sound.

Grainger was an Australian born composer and pianist who pioneered many experimental techniques including extended piano, free music, music making machines, 'unplayable' pianola music, chance procedures and graphic notation, well before these became standardised approaches within avant garde composition.

This work proposes further abstractions in music composition through the language of sound and image in order to afford the freedom of interpretation to performer, composer and viewer.

Call for Volunteers

Platform is currently seeking volunteers!

If you are interested please contact us at:

info[at]platform.org.au

August Exhibitions 2013

For this exhibition Platform is re-imagined as an unofficial Melbourne off-site venue for the Venice Biennale. The selected artists will respond to curator Massimiliano Gioni’s theme, Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopaedic Palace), which derives from an imaginary museum conceived by Marino Auriti in the 1950’s. It encapsulates an ideal of universal knowledge and the democratisation of information. Within this artist-run exhibition, Auriti’s vision of The Encyclopaedic Palace is unhindered by the specificity of Venice.

‘Flesh Forms’ is an evolving collection of familial organisms made to reference, mimic and quietly pervert the body. These playful objects tease the viewer as their initially ambiguous and abstract forms begin to combine with natural and recognisable attributes. An indeterminate object becomes vaguely reminiscent of a leg, a tongue, a hair, a finger, a worm. Subtle imitation, simple production methods and unassuming materials allow this uncanny accumulation of strange items to form connections with familiar objects or known spaces.

This installation is about Tran's experiences as a first generation Australian, it is a tribute to immigrants, new Australians and first generation Australians.                         

Books are a powerful symbol; they tell stories, represent knowledge, adventure, and are an object of potential wisdom. A culmination of what has been learnt so far.

The title of the show refers to the glass cabinets of Platform, and offers a glimpse into Tran's life of feeling the same, yet looking different. Being on display and on show. Accepted, but separate.

July Exhibitions 2013

 Nellie Rogerson and Matthew Dettmer are concerned with the process of our daily manufactured environment. Looking at design, energy, function and the reading of images and objects within our everyday, Poppy Knocker aims to question how we view the design of the world around us. Play is an intrinsic ingredient within this exhibition as Dettmer and Rogerson work through their materials; a fine mesh of association and equilibrium often surfaces.

 The works amalgamated as Valediction suggest a narrative, a correspondence between fragmented elements, the viewer, and their own reflection. They describe distance and absence, all contained in the poetry of what could be read as a ‘letter’ home, a valediction, a farewell.

Unable to escape the tangible confines of the Vitrine, these elements pause in a state of suspension. The looping rhythm of the video work suggests an attempt at a melancholy release, a familiar shore to where someone is perhaps leaving from, or returning.

A small case for N –Regard is a small-scale, site-specific installation work developed for Platform’s Sample Space. Obscure, faintly familiar, white forms are piled; forms are arranged and contained in a field of white-painted display case. The work is an experiment, a sensitive inquiry into forms that remain incomplete and ambiguous, putting into question perception, understanding, affect and the place of description and language. 

June Exhibitions 2013

In the series Event Horizon drawing is used by Darcey Bella Arnold as a method of recording a visionary experience. The reoccurring motif of birds evokes concepts of utopia and dreamlike hallucinations, a landscape which could be, rather than one that is. Using the site as a Wunderkammer the artist has used the light boxes of Platform as a memory theatre, symbolically conveying the world through controlled reproduction. References to late 70's and 80's sci-fi cinema are heavily present in the title and in the imagery. Each drawing contains a prominent horizon line, so as one walks quickly through the transient public space you could trick yourself into thinking you actually are portalled into an alternate dimension. 

A wave is a disturbance that travels through space and matter, accompanied by a transfer of energy.

The looping, or repetition, of a past event brings about a shift in time. The past is now a very real and significant aspect of the present, endlessly repeated, causing a temporal hiatus. This segment of time is of higher import, for some reason needing to be broadcast as consistently part of the present, and predictably as part of the future. (Why is it so important?)

(If photos come from reality, what kind of reality comes from photos?)

Through misdirection we find direction. 

 Mystic Terrain explores landscape as a space that extends from our natural environment into the cosmos. This explored territory slips between places that are visited and unknown. In this exhibition, the artist uses the methods of assemblage (such as collage and drawing) in order to construct/deconstruct an image of landscape, before reconfiguring an imaginary vision through painting.