Platform Hero Billboard: Bushrangers, Raafat Ishak

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

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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

Platform Hero Billboard: Quicksilver Sentinels, Susan Jacobs

Quicksilver Sentinels

Susan Jacobs

19 May-31 Oct, 2016

Hero Building Billboard

118 Russell Street

Melbourne

Quicksilver Sentinels is the first in a series of commissions for the Hero Building, initiated by Platform Art Spaces.

Jacobs' work taps into notions of the hero image and sympathetic magic. From the imitative and protective behaviours of the mules, comes the idea of sympathetic magic, where things that have once been in physical contact, continue to influence each other from a distance. Jacobs captured the image in the small ghost town of Terlingua, south west of Marfa, Texas, during a research trip to Land Art sites of the 1960s and 70s. In a chance encounter she observed the two mules standing apart like a pair or sentinels guarding the entrance to a ranch before watching them gradually merge together. As a former mining district, Terlingua had once produced cinnabar, a red-toned mineral ore from which the element mercury is extracted. A relief sculpture on the facade of the Hero Building depicts the Roman god Mercury, who holds a caduceus comprised of two serpents intertwined around a winged staff, also commonly used as the symbol for the elemental metal mercury.

In heightening a recognition of chance encounters, Quicksilver Sentinels points to the unknown possibilities that may be realised through the power of observation, making us more perceptive to moments of connectedness in the world and within our lives.

Curated by Angela Brophy

For further information contact info@platform.org.au

Supported by the City of Melbourne through the Arts Grants Program

Image: Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne

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SUSAN JACOBS completed a Bachelor of Visual Art at the University of Newcastle in 1997 and a Graduate Diploma of Visual Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1999. She currently teaches at Monash University Faculty of Art and Design and at the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne. She was a Gertrude studio resident from 2011–13, an Artspace Sydney resident in 2013, and a resident at the MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire in 2014. She has held numerous solo and group exhibitions over the past fifteen years and recently has presented major commissioned works at the Adelaide Biennial of Australia Art (2012), the Asia Pacific Triennial at QAG/GOMA (2012–13), and in Melbourne Now at the National Gallery of Victoria (2013–14). Her work is held in the Monash University Art Collection, University of Queensland Art Collection, VCA Art Collection, MLC Art Collection, Poster Collection of Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich, Switzerland and numerous private collections.

In September 2016 Jacobs will present a new commissioned work for Incerteza viva [Live Uncertainty], the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, curated by Jochen Volz.

Susan Jacobs is represented by Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne