Nellie Castan Gallery
Izabela Pluta
Sailing For The Abyss


Exhibition runs from 15 April – 8 May, 2010

“The exhibition Sailing for the abyss is a specific assembly of photographs, objects and video work that Pluta has been experimenting with since 2008. They reference her preoccupation with places-those visited, lived in or imaginary. Suggesting the desire to be somewhere else, through perhaps a voyage, or an optimistic journey for a new land, these works navigate through memory and time.”

Linden Centre For Contemporary Arts
Innovators 1 Exhibitions
Artists:
Pebble Botannica and (It will be a) New Garden – Benedict Ernst
Everything You Know is About to Change, Forever – Andy Hutson
Buildage – Skye Kennewell
Slender Harbour – Lisa Barmby
20 Halifax Street – Tess Milne

Lisa Barmby Peggy Guggenheim's Gondola Poles 2009

Exhibitions run from 10 April – 9 May, 2010

“Five new exhibitions explore ideas of scale, perspective and the relationship with the viewer.”

TERRITORIAL PISSINGS
Utopian Slumps
Ground Floor, 33 Guildford Lane Melbourne
Group show including:
SEAN BAILEY, DAN BELL, NATHAN GRAY, MICHELLE HANLIN, MATTHEW HOPKINS, SASKIA LEEK, ROB McHAFFIE, TOBY POLA, TOM POLO, TIM PRICE, MARK RODDA, GEMMA SMITH, MASATO TAKASAKA, JAKE WALKER, AMBER WALLIS

Opening night Thursday April 15, 6 – 8pm

Exhibition dates: April 16 – May 8, 2010

Territorial Pissings will bring together fifteen Australian artists to explore the notion of mark-making: with all the glib inferences of the Nirvana song. Surveying territorial pissing as an abject methodology — how the encrustation and infestation of things relates to ownership of space — the exhibition aims to address ironic incarnations of ownership and assertions of ‘property’ in contemporary art. The exhibition will acknowledge both the intense cynicism underpinning this notion, as well as the more complex and indefinable motivations behind mark-making more universally.

Also opening this Thursday 15th April…

The Nothing
West Space
Artists: Damiano Bertoli, Lou Hubbard, Sanné Mestrom, Deborah Ostrow, Daniel Price, Matthew Shannon & Jackson Slattery
Opening night Thursday April 15, 6 – 8pm
Curated by Kelly Fliedner

Exhibition dates: 16 April–8 May 2010

“The Nothing explores realms of the unknown and potentially unknowable aspects of human understanding— the things that we can’t fully comprehend or for which words and recognisable forms simply do not exist. The exhibition’s title, ‘The Nothing’, is taken from the childhood fable ‘The Never ending Story’, wherein an indescribable ‘emptiness’ pervades Fantasia (the mythical land in which the story takes place), chronicling the gap between islands of human knowledge and understanding. ‘The Nothing’ addresses liminal spaces, transposing and transforming materials from the familiar to the foreign in order to explore themes of uncertainty and crisis.”

Kotoe Ishii
Green Thumb
Federation Square big screen
As part of Next Wave’s Time Lapse Screening

Exhibition runs April 1 – 29, 2010

The screenings run through to the end of April and take place every Thursday from 5.30-6.30pm.

“Green Thumb is a work that, when presented on the Big Screen, will introduce a simultaneously innocent and disturbing intimacy to the public space of Federation Square.”

“Adapted from the 1950s children’s picture-book of the same name, Green Thumb is a short video using photographic stop-motion techniques, created on a loop. There is no dialogue, just natural, ambient sounds. Continuing Kotoe’s long-held investigations into the physical effect of repressed emotions on the body, Green Thumb sees a series of repeated actions/movements in public space.  Specifically, the video features Kotoe’s own thumb, shot in close-up, inserting itself into various holes in the urban landscape. As she does this, plants and trees sprout from the holes.”

Two South African artists create strategies for survival in Australia.

Zanele Muholi and Anthea Moys
Faculty Gallery, Faculty Art & Design – Monash University
Opening night: Wednesday, April 14, 5-7pm

Exhibition runs April 8 – 16, 2010

“Over a two month period, two South African artists, Zanele Muholi and Anthea Moys create strategies to negotiate their space within Melbourne, Australia.

Muholi’s focus is on body politics in which race, gender and sexuality are her muse.

Moys’ interest lies in the relationship between risk, fear and play enacted through the body in sport and how this is performed on Melbourne’s various playing fields.”