The Colour Factory is a proud sponsor of ‘The Spirit of the Black Dress’ photography exhibition that showcases talented emerging fashion designers.

The Fashion Photography exhibition runs from 12-6pm, 12-21st March at Georges on Collins, 195 Little Collins Street, Melbourne, FREE entry.

“We are a group of independent recent graduates from different backgrounds committed to raising the profile of emerging fashion and increasing international appreciation for Australian design. We run an annual Fashion Photography Exhibition that showcases ten of Australia’s most innovative emerging designers.

In our second year we are amazed and humbled at the talent and innovation shown by emerging fashion designers. The ten for 2010 were chosen on the aesthetics of their garments as well as their response to environmental issues, by a panel of industry judges including Janice Breen Burns, Karen Webster, Joe Saba, Roger Leong and Emer Diviney. The garments showcase a varied landscape of sustainably driven creativity.”

‘Embodiment: Fashion, Image and Art’
Guildford Lane Gallery
5 Artists: Claudia Phares, Cody Daley, Jillian Allan, Julee Latimer, Milla Zhugalo
Opening night Thursday March 11 at 6pm

Image: Claudia Phares

This exhibition runs from March 8 to 21, 2010

A curated exhibition that explores personal identity through fashion, design, illustration and art.

Also on at Guildford Lane
‘New Masculinities’
Clinton Hayden
Opening night Thursday March 11 at 6pm

Clinton Hayden explores and interrogates ideas of identity and sense of self through photography, drawing and painting. Using fashion (modes of masculine dress both traditional and contemporary) as a foundation, the exhibition culminates in a series of portraits, exploring masculinity, masculine representation and masculine construct through fashion.

Vivien Racault
Melbourne French Alliance
‘Between Plant and Ghost’
Opening night March 11, 2010

Exhibition runs from March 11 to April 9.

A poetic and critical fantasy about the notion of evolution and the radical transformation of our consciousness.

Sarah Berners
Bus Projects – Main Space
The Garment-Body
Opening Tuesday March 2, 6-8pm

Exhibition runs from March 2-19, 2010

“The Garment-Body is a photographic and sculpture based exhibition which explores an intimate synthesis between flesh and fabric. The Garment-Body is an exploration of the erotic appeal of inanimate materials in conjunction with the human body. The exhibition considers the fusing of flesh and fabric as a symptom of the human urge to bond with and transform the body in relation to its environments, objects and garb”.

Paul Philipson
c3 Contemporary Art Space
A hierarchy of loss
Opening March 3, 6-8pm

Exhibition runs from March 3-21, 2010

“Philipson’s work explores the poetics of photography and its ability to present description without place. His seemingly unrelated images, when placed together, expose a shared language. The result is an unsettling exploration through territories as diverse as the elegiac texture of his landscapes to the texture of skin itself. The currency of the sublime runs through every aspect of Philipson’s work. His upcoming exhibition shows a series of ethereal photographs which transport you from a frozen lake, to a misty tree-lined road, to a night owl caught in the flash of a light. The effect is one of an almost David Lynch-ian strangeness, deftly offset by a sweeping gesture towards German romanticism.”

Lez Horvat
Red Gallery
The Minefield and the Lotus
Opening Wednesday March 3, 2010
Exhibition runs from March 3-20, 2010

“This series of photographic works was captured in Ba Ria-Vung Tau (formally Phuc Tuy) province in Vietnam over the course of the past two years. Horvat’s images feature Vietnamese and Australian service personnel who were involved in the Vietnam/American war. As he reveals, ‘these portraits seek to explore the effects of conflict upon service personnel of both sides. The lotus flower, which for centuries has been known not only for its great beauty but also for its ability to rise from the mud, is used as a metaphor for renewal and growth and as a signifier of place.’’”

Allan Kleiman
Colour Factory Gallery
Urban Archaeology- reconstructing the present
Opening Thursday March 4, 6-8pm

Exhibition runs from March 4-20, 2010

Allan, a successful commercial photographer for many years, has recently turned his passion for photography into the pursuit of fine art. This body of work presents the graphic beauty of the everyday, illustrating and recording degrees of urban decoration and decay. Mostly shot in the familiar streets of Melbourne, Allan invites the viewer to imagine and interpret these ‘discoveries’ in the same way that an archaeologist discovers the remains of ancient civilizations and reconstructs what life was like.

Slow Dance
West Space
Shay Minster
Opening: Thursday February 18, 6-8pm

Image: Shay Minster

Exhibition runs from February 19 to March 13, 2010

Free Artist Talk: Thursday March 11, 12.30-1.30pm Gallery 3

“The Slow Dance exhibition examines the tragic comedy of the human condition. Appearing familiar and amusing at first, the project explores the suppression experienced when a personality is radically altered through the manipulation of their environment. A clown motif – drained of its usual high colour and its joyous free dance restricted – flails about in a futile attempt to fulfill its intended purpose. Stuck in endless repetition, Slow Dance confronts, in an absurd manner, the existential vacuum”.

Addition and Erasure
VCA- Margaret Lawrence Gallery
Opening Thursday 18 February 6–8pm
Exhibition runs from February 19 to March 20, 2010

Artists/participants: Luke Beesley, Michael Farrell, Doug Heslop, Helen Johnson, Margaret Mahem, Peter O’Mara, Simon Pericich. Curators: Luke Beesley and Doug Heslop

Image: Luke Beesley

“This project will represent a collaboration between a number of artists and poets and will engage a between space – ‘addition and erasure’ – as a conceptual beginning for an artwork. Addition and Erasure includes participants and works that locate language and/or text somewhere between contemporary art and poetry, as a strategy for illuminating the question or place of the author, reader, spectator or critic; and as a way of challenging easy categorisation. Some of the questions the exhibition aims to raise include: Is text a limited medium? How can poetry exist alongside contemporary art practice?  Where might the gallery and the page meet? Can they be made identical? More specifically, perhaps: Can ‘poets’ and ‘artists’ be critiqued in a single breath?”

Wordless
Vivian Cooper Smith
C3 Contemporary Art Space - Space B
Opening Wednesday February 3, 2010

Image: Vivian Cooper Smith

“Wordless is a collection of photographic images that examine a life without anchors, without precedents and without hope in eternity. It examines life in the dark, without the illumination of understanding and description. It is a meditation on losing a faith and unbelieving in God.

Vivian Cooper Smith grew up the son of missionaries in Bangladesh. After finishing school and a Fine Arts degree in Perth he moved to Melbourne 10 years ago. He works as a photographer and graphic designer and has exhibited widely both locally and nationally”.

Secret History of the Working Men’s College
RMIT Project Space
Group exhibition
Opening Thursday February 5, 2010

Artist’s inlcude:
[Anon], Rhett D’Costa, Richard Harding, Kate Just, Nick Pantazopoulos, Spiros Panigirakis, Drew Pettifer,  Jon Riethmuller, Jonas Ropponen, David Sequeira , Glenn Walls

Image: Drew Pettifer

“Secret Files from the Working Men’s College highlights some of the talent that over time has been fostered and released from the School at Art of RMIT University. Gallagher brings together artists who reflect on gay lifestyle through the subtle inclusion of queer content into their art practice. This exhibition is part of the Midsumma Festival’s Queer City”.

Canadian Pharmacy
Neon Parc
Group exhibition
Opening Wednesday February 3, 2010

Image: Stephen Bush

Canadian Pharmacy is a group art exhibition that brings together 18 artists and collaborations from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The show includes artists works from the following: Dan Arps, Hugo Atkins, Stuart Bailey, Stephen Bush, Gabrielle De Veitri, Danielle Freakley, Ian Haig, Greatest Hits.

Re / Gendered
Platform Artists Group Inc.
Artists: Monika Tichacek (Sydney), Tejal Shah (India), Jake Wotherspoon (Melbourne), Drew Pettifer (Melbourne), Fran Barrett, Kate Blackmore & Anastasia Zaravinos (Sydney), Liam Benson (Sydney), 4evamore (Melbourne), Michelle Tran (Melbourne), Gerard O’Connor & Marc Wasiak (Melbourne).

Opening Monday 25th January 2010, 6 – 8pm

Image: Gerard O’Connor & Marc Wasiak

Presented by Midsumma 2010 & Platform
Curator: Laura Castagnini

Re/Gendered brings together a number of high profile international and Australian artists in a group exhibition that celebrates the notion of fluid or ‘unstable’ gender. These artists all aim to transgress and blur the boundaries of gender performance. Often using drag as a technique to destabilise identity, these diverse artists disrupt and subvert the traditional binary system of gender. In turns joyful, disturbing, and deliberately ambiguous, these artworks expose the theatricality involved in our everyday performance of gender roles.

This art exhibition runs until February 6, 2010.

Trish Morrissey
Centre for Contemporary Photography – Gallery 3

In the four works that comprise this exhibition Trish Morrissey employs self-portraiture, performance and wit as tools to investigate the boundaries of photographic meaning through still and moving images. The humour often evaporates, leaving a slow-burning psychologically tense afterglow. Weaving fact and fiction, she plunges into the heart of such issues as family experiences and national identities, Irish middle-class values, feminine and masculine roles, and relationships between strangers.

This photographic exhibition runs until March 14, 2010.

MIDSUMMA is upon us! The annual festival celebrating queer culture has just begun with loads of visual art to entertain and inspire. Pick up a copy of the Midsumma Visual Arts Catalogue or check out www.midsumma.org.au to see the list of exhibitions and events.

TRANSMASCULINITIES

Red Gallery
157 St Georges Rd
Fitzroy North

Artists: Jacqui Brown, Claire Henry, Amos Mac, Jesslyn Moss, melly niotakis, Aiden Simon, Rohan Spong, Gabriel M Thomson, L. Weingarten
Curated by Jesslyn Moss

Image: L.Weingarten

Opening night January 22, 6 – 8pm
Wed – Sat, 11 – 5pm
Until 6 February

New modes of masculinity that reflect constantly shifting aspects of transgender butch, gender queer and transmasculine experience are explored by the eight artists in this show. The artists present subjects who are active and embodied, who evoke a wide range of potential interpretations and reflections on masculinity. Featuring artists from Australia, the UK and USA, who use photography, painting, drawing and video.

The Colour Factory is a proud sponsor of Transmasculinities.

FINDING SPACE

The Carlton Hotel Studios
Level 2, 193 Bourke St, Melbourne

Artists: Aspen, Jeremy Camilleri, Linsey Gosper, Nicholas Harmer, Clinton Hayden, Adrian John, Jason Lingard, ArthurMartha, Geoff Newman, Drew Pettifer, Salote Tawale, Michael Taylor, Marc Trabsky, Kristin Wursthorn, Paul Yore.

Curated by Jason Lingard

Image: Linsey Gosper

Opening January 19, 6 – 9pm
Wed-Sat 4 – 7pm
Until 6 February

Finding Space presents 14 artists working in photography, video and installation, crammed together in an old, abandoned hotel on Bourke Street. Exploring a symbiotic dialogue between the artists, their community and the constructed world they reside in, Finding Space touches upon the precarious intimacy between imagination and physical space.

Global Mind Project
Federation Square
Karen Casey in collaboration with:
Jill Orr
Stelarc
Domenico De Clario
Friday 15th January 2010

Launch 8pm, Performances 8.30pm – Midnight

Global Mind project is a unique creative venture combining new media art, neuroscience and computer technology. The project was conceived by Karen Casey and undertaken in partnership with software designer Harry Sokol. Together they have developed a means of generating real time video art from brainwaves.

The Melbourne launch of the Global Mind project represents the first stage of an online artistic forum that will creatively engage people through public interaction and collaboration.

Performances streamed online www.globalmindproject.com

Jenny Holzer
ACCA
Now until February 28, 2010

The first Australian survey of works by New York artist Jenny Holzer has opened at ACCA. Holzer first became well-known in the 1980s for her text based works and public art.