PLATFORM ART SPACES

Platform Hero Billboard: Continuous Moment: Mutual Life, Damiano Bertoli

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Damiano Bertoli

Continuous Moment: Mutual life 2018

August 2018-March 2019

Hero Building Billboard

118 Russell Street

Melbourne

Building reigned as an extravagant ode to gold rush opulence from 1896 until

its demolition in 1959, its components subsequently distributed and redefined

on other sites around Melbourne.

On land purchased by the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the USA, ‘The

Grandest Building in the Southern Hemisphere’ introduced Melbourne to an

‘Americanised Renaissance’ style, a hybrid revival form which signals the

recent history of this monument as ‘constructed’.

Purchased by the Museum of Victoria in 2000, fragments of the façade were

placed in Colonial Square and nominated as sculptures, arranged as 'ruins in

advance'. Melbourne artist Damiano Bertoli continues their journey through a

rhetorical time warp.

Recontextualising the fragments in a landscape depicting both the Cartesian

space of classical Western perspective and the ‘futuristic’ space of ‘80s

gaming and music video, Bertoli’s image draws attention to their shifting

status as mutable objects representing a jumbled accumulation of

genealogies which move simultaneously back through history and forward into

the future.

Curated by Angela Brophy

In conjunction with Spring1883

Supported by the City of Melbourne through the Arts Grants Program

Image: Courtesy of the artist and NeonParc, Melbourne

Damiano Bertoli's Continuous Moment: Mutual life will be available as a framed limited edition print from Neon Parc, Victorian Suite 306, Spring1883, The Hotel Windsor, 2-4 August, 2018

Platform Hero Billboard: Sound Painting, Danae Valenza

Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Sound Painting

Danae Valenza

Dec 2017-Jul 2018

Hero Building Billboard

118 Russell Street

Melbourne

Speaking, punctuated. Gusts of wind pluck vocal chords. Sounds accompanied by a wave of hands, curl of fingers. Eyebrows raise, heads tilt, movement for the presence of another being. Bridging one voice to another. A corporeal sonic architecture transmits.

Sound becomes photographic. Musicians strike a chord or play a note. A strobe flickers light. Listening and playing is in tandem with ritual movement. C sharp-F major-B flat.

Folklore over fire. Flames push and soften as light hits hands and speech. Shadows in flux. Lit pizzicato washes through the ears and eyes of others, to rest again in another body.

DANAE VALENZA is a Melbourne-based artist for whom music and collaboration is a major part of her art-making. Valenza holds a BFA from Monash University and has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas, including: MCA, Sydney 2016; ACCA, Melbourne, 2014; Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2014; Prawneg & Wolf, South Tyrol, Italy, 2013; Objectifs Centre for Photography & Film Making, Singapore, 2014; Bus Projects, Melbourne, 2013 and Next Wave Festival, Melbourne, 2012. Valenza has been awarded The Ian Potter Travelling Scholarship, 2013and participated in the residency program at Helsinki International Arts Program in Finland, following her studio residency at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, from 2014.

Curated by Angela Brophy

Supported by the City of Melbourne through the Arts Grants Program

For further information contact angela@platform.org.au

Text and Image: Courtesy of the artist

Platform Hero Billboard: Accidental Hero, Lou Hubbard

Photograph: Andrew Curtis

Accidental Hero

Lou Hubbard

4 May-1 Nov 2017

Hero Building Billboard

118 Russell Street

Melbourne

Hubbard's Accidental Hero is an image transported to Australia from Antwerp as a portal that folds in space and time: a window, turned billboard, turned window, turned portal. Accidental Hero loops site and purpose; the image taken from footage filmed by the artist at the historic lockkeeper’s house in Antwerp (now an international artist’s residency).

Hubbard has created a troupe l’ceil, not painted, a photographic still from Angle of Incidence, a video work in progress. The visible ‘control bar’ acts as a nod to the prominent barcode feature on the building.

With Accidental Hero, Hubbard has bricked-up a Melbourne billboard with a slice of Antwerp history. Standing in the open window, our accidental hero is a long way from the port of Antwerp. He stands in full view of Russell Street, like other figures seen on high: popes, royalty, despots, rockstars, even Julian Assange.

An unassuming image at first glance, Accidental Hero is open to multiple readings over time and conditions, brick upon brick.

LOU HUBBARD has exhibited widely throughout Australia and internationally, with recent exhibitions including Table Land, Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne (2016); Neverwhere, Gaia Gallery, Istanbul (2015); Dead Still Standing, West Space, Melbourne (2015); Melbourne Now, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, (2013-14); FX, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, (2013); The Knock Off Show, Slopes, Melbourne, (2013); Antic Measures, Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin, (2011–12); NEW10, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, (2010); Change, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, (2010); Making It New: Focus on Contemporary Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, (2009). In 2015 Hubbard won the Art Gallery of Ballarat Guirguis New Art Prize. She completed a Master of Fine Art at RMIT University in 2001 and is currently Head of Photography at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

Curated by Angela Brophy

Supported by the City of Melbourne through the Arts Grants Program

To coincide with the launch event Lou Hubbard's Accidental Hero will be available as a framed limited edition print from Sarah Scout Presents

For further information contact info@platform.org.au

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

Platform Hero Billboard: Bushrangers, Raafat Ishak

Photograph: Andrew Curtis

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Bushrangers

Raafat Ishak

7 Nov 2016-1 May 2017

Hero Building Billboard

118 Russell Street

Melbourne

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.

Platform Hero Billboard: Quicksilver Sentinels, Susan Jacobs

Photograph: Andrew Curtis

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