Gertrude Studios 2015

Held annually since 1988, the Gertrude Contemporary Studio Artists exhibition offers a cross-section of contemporary art practice in Melbourne, surveying a multiplicity of artistic approaches and concerns. The 2015 Gertrude Studios exhibition featured new work by each of the sixteen 2015 Studio Artists, and premiered several new collaborations. Eric Demetriou presented a performance with professional whip-cracker Herb Jercher. Fayen d’Evie, in collaboration with Lisa Radford and Liang Luscombe, presented a new video work related to their recent group participation in The 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Yekaterinburg, Russia. And, in the vernacular of expanded painting, Soren Dahlgaard and Tully Moore attempted to paint a garden gnome located in the main gallery from an artist studio upstairs using elongated paint brushes and go-pro cameras.

The exhibition also featured a new, major installation by Debris Facility that stretched across the gallery’s long front window and sparked a visual dialogue with the façade of their own studio located on the third floor of the gallery (also facing Gertrude Street), the windows of which always appear to be framing new, brightly coloured materials. Studio Artists co-opted other spaces in the building too: Adelle Mills exhibited a two-channel video in her studio, and Ross Coulter created a multi-channel sound piece designed specifically for the studio corridor upstairs.

An exhibition catalogue with multiple texts by the six members of Rex Butler’s Emerging Writers group—Jack Willet, Amelia Winata, Jon Dale, Audrey Schmidt, Tara Cook and Jeremy Eaton—became available shortly after the exhibition opened. The annual Gertrude Studios exhibition catalogue was available at the opening for the cost of $4.40.