Bushrangers
Raafat
Ishak
7
Nov 2016-1 May 2017
Hero
Building Billboard
118
Russell Street
Melbourne
Bushrangers is the second in a series of commissions for the
Hero Building, initiated by Platform Art Spaces.
The
Hero Billboard re-imagines William Strutt’s Bushrangers painting from 1852
(collection of the University of Melbourne). The bushrangers painting is in
itself a re-imagining of a hold-up on St Kilda Road that occurred during the
Gold Rush. The idealised and classical triangular composition is re-imagined in
the Hero Billboard as Strutt’s models comprising a group of friends and artists
rather than robbers and victims. While Strutt would have been compelled to
depict a contemporary narrative that evoked the foundations of a new
settlement, he operated within the conventions of a studio artist, utilising
close associates and friends as models and manipulating form and composition to
invoke the esoteric and painterly qualities of his time. The Hero Billboard is
likewise proposed as a photographic assembly of artists and friends, evoking
the contemporary nature of social interaction and the materiality, which
encapsulates it.
The
Bushrangers painting was chosen because it is quintessentially Melbourne,
historic and evokes a period that has no particular resonance with contemporary
urban Melbourne. Yet, its studio staging and aspirational painterly values do
evoke a contemporary preoccupation with re-evaluating the city’s heritage and
stressing the social progress that has been achieved in the past 200 years.
Raafat
Ishak
September
2016
Curated
by Angela Brophy
For
further information contact info@platform.org.au
This project is supported
by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and the
City of Melbourne through the Arts Grants Program
Image: Courtesy of the
artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
----
Raafat
Ishak was born 1967, Cairo, Egypt; arrived in Australia
1982; lives and works in Melbourne.
Ishak
completed a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) at the Victorian College of Arts in
1990.
Selected recent solo
exhibitions include: Raafat Ishak: Work
in Progress, Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, 2010; and Proposition for a Banner March and
a Black Cube Hot Air Balloon, with Tom Nicholson, Shepparton Art Museum,
2012.
Ishak’s work has been included in major group exhibitions, including the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of
Contemporary Art, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane,
2009; NEW10, Australian
Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2010; The
Future of a Promise, Venice Biennale, 2011; Shifting Geometries, Embassy of
Australia, Washington D. C., 2012; Alienation,
Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, 2012; and Safar/Voyage, Museum of
Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 2013.
Raafat
Ishak is represented by Sutton Gallery,
Melbourne