Wardlow
Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs
The Secret Life of Plants
Opening May 26, 7pm

Open by appointment 28 May – 18 June

“Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs (*1979), originally from Switzerland, live and work in Berlin. Their practice involves Photography, Sculptures and Installation. After numerous shows in Europe and America (solo exhibitions in PS1 MoMA – New York and EX3 – Florence), this show at Wardlow is the culmination of the artists’ works made in Australia.”

Brunswick Street Gallery
Rachel Davidson
‘Breadcrumbs’

Exhibition dates 21 May – 3 June, 2010

George Paton Gallery
Linda Loh
Mark

Opening Wednesday May 19, 6-8pm

Exhibition dates: 19 May – 29 May 2010

“This work is about making our mark. Perhaps these marks are like the clutter of the mind, filling space, obscuring silence and emptiness.”

Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP)

Greatest Hits- Faux Thrills
Photocopier (group show)
Event Horizon (group show)
Alison Bennett – Miss Carmichael’s View

Opening Thursday May 20, 6-8pm

Image: Greatest Hits

Exhibition dates: 21 May – 18 July 2010

There are some great photographic exhibitions coming up at CCP in the next few weeks including ‘Greatest Hits – Faux Thrills’.

With the Next Wave festival currently on in Melbourne, there are loads of great exhibitions and performances to check out this week!

Check out this website for a full listing of Next Wave events.

Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Main Gallery
Mercy Street
Artists: Sherry McLane Alejos (AUS/MEXICO), CJ Conway (AUS/US), Kaori Kato (AUS/JAPAN), Alanna Lorenzon (AUS), Nicholas Waddell (AUS) Curator: Anusha Kenny

Opening Friday May 14

Exhibition runs from May 14 to June 12

“Mercy Street curated by Anusha Kenny is presented as part of Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces (GCAS) and Next Wave Festival’s 2010 Emerging Curators program.

Mercy Street breaks apart the concept of ‘mercy’ exploring the conflicting forces of frustration, failure and forgiveness that are embedded within it. Approaching the concept from a legal perspective the works in this exhibition highlight the ways that these often amorphous, fluid concepts are formalised through public decision-making and ideas of justice.

The exhibition takes its title from Anne Sexton’s poem 45 Mercy Street, which explores the conflict embedded within ideas of mercy from a personal perspective. This exhibition identifies how these concerns operate both inside and outside the law, shadowing personal as well as public relationships. Mercy Street will explore how private understandings of mercy affect public decision-making and are formalised through the legal process.
Mercy Street features work by five artists who are distinguished by their acute awareness of the precariousness of ethics and morality. This awareness is inscribed heavily in their works and is made manifest through aesthetic fragility, constant motion, and intermittence. In contrast to the blunt finality of legislation, the works in the exhibition formalize emotion and address human frailty with compassion and flexibility. Ultimately, the exhibition is an elegy to those who have been able to show grace when revenge would be just as appropriate.”

Also on this Friday…
Light Projects ARI
Kristina Tsoulis-Reay
Submarine

Opening drinks: 6-9pm Friday 14 May, 2010

This exhibition will run from 14 May- 6 June, 2010

The exhibition may be viewed Saturdays and Sundays 12-5pm

Visit www.light-projects.com for more information.

There is loads of art to see this Thursday night…perhaps an art crawl is in order!

Plenty
Tim Handfield
Colour Factory Gallery

Exhibition opening Thursday May 6, 6-8pm
To be opened by: Stephen Zagala, Curator, Monash Gallery of Art
Artist floor talk: Saturday May 22, 2.00pm
Exhibition dates: May 6 to 29, 2010

Plenty explores the margins of Plenty Road between Bundoora and South Morang, where Melbourne’s outer urban development meets the grassy eucalypt woodland of the Victorian Volcanic Plain. The photographs reveal a strange and compelling mixture of excess and decay, opportunity and loss as the landscape undergoes dramatic change.

Tim Handfield’s work is held in local and international collections including those of the National Gallery of Victoria, the National Gallery of Australia, Artbank and the Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego, CA.

First Born
Robert Doble & Simon Strong
Block Projects

Opening Thursday May 6, 6-8pm

Exhibition dates May 6 – May 29, 2010

“English-born Robert Doble studied at the Chelsea School of Art in London but now resides in Australia. Doble paintings explore symbolism, mythology and folklore along with Politics and religion. Vietnamese born Simon Strong creates works that explore our perception of what is plausible. His intrigue for dreams and the constructs of the human memory.”

Fragments
Artists include: Clinton Hayden, Todd Anderson-Kunert, Ashley Kerr, Shannon Crowe, Anita Stevens
Guildford Lane Gallery

Opening Thursday May 6, 6 – 8pm

Exhibition dates May 6 -  30, 2010

Image: Todd Anderson-Kunert

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.”