NEW08 - the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s annual exhibition for emerging artists
Seven Australian artists will create their dream works for NEW08, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s annual commissions exhibition for emerging artists.
This year audiences will be treated to dayglo geometrics, resuscitated record covers, fluro patterns, mirror worlds and live social encounters in an exhibition series that is known for consistently delivering works of surprise and invention.
Now in its sixth year, NEW is intended to reveal the very latest in artistic practice from the freshest crop of young Australian artists. Participants are selected from Australia’s vast pool of practicing artists – they usually have exhibited in artist-run or smaller commercial galleries and are developing a following and a level of success in their careers. NEW is intended to offer these artists the opportunity to create a work of scale and ambition, and act as a stepping-stone for them on the road to career success.
Since its inception in 2003, over thirty artists have shown a variety of diverse and fascinating works within ACCA’s exhibition hall. Anastasia Klose drew upon her life’s own painful moments to make videos about love, sex and not being married in NEW07, while Mira Gojak cut up and dissected a household wardrobe, recreating it into a surreal and beautiful sculpture in NEW05, and the Makeshift Collective, a Sydney based ‘art tribe’ constructed an intricate yet volatile cardboard castle that was part mood maze, part adventure playground in NEW06.
This year NEW is curated by Anna MacDonald. Anna has been part of the curatorial team at ACCA for the past two years and has been curatorial coordinator on NEW06 and NEW07, Gillian Wearing: Living Proof, A Constructed World: Increase Your Uncertainty; and most recently Richard Billingham: People Places Animals. Before joining ACCA, Anna was curator of the Melbourne Scarf Festival. She also coordinated the Kate Challis RAKA Award, an annual award for Indigenous Australian creative artists. NEW08 is her first major solo curatorial opportunity.
The NEW08 artists are:
Daniel Argyle: Daniel Argyle has had work in several solo and group exhibitions, particularly in his home-state of Western Australia. His interests are related to the relationship between modernist and avant-garde perceptions of art, and he is known for creating elaborate collages using record covers. For NEW08 Daniel plans to create two works based on thrift-shop record covers from the EMI subsidiary World Records.
Matt Hinkley: Melbourne based Hinkley creates meticulously rendered abstract drawings inspired by digital graphics and design aesthetics. Hailing from the Neon Parc stable of artists, Hinkley has had recent solo exhibitions there and at ACCA @ Mirka and has previously shown his work at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, PICA and Artspace in Sydney. For NEW08 Matt will create a series of drawings that reference minimalism and 60s Optical Art.
Sandra Selig: Sandra Selig has made a number of public art commissions in her home state of Queensland and exhibited widely in Brisbane. Her practice encourages viewers to consider the space they inhabit and to understand sight as a whole-body, not just a visual experience. For NEW08, Sandra will create an installation in which the viewer will move through a darkened environment enlivened by reflections created by an elusive source of light.
Chris Bond: Melbourne based artist Chris Bond paints paperback covers with meticulous detail, using high modernist abstraction. A former Gertrude Street studio artist, Chris has had solo exhibitions at Nellie Castan Gallery, Bus and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, and has shown work in a number of group shows at spaces such as West Space and Linden Gallery. For NEW08 he will create a ‘mirrorworld’ – an installation using a series of identical objects informed by Chaos Theory and resembling a kind of graveyard of spent form.
Gabrielle de Vietri: Gabrielle’s concept driven, language-based practice has seen her create works that propose alternative ways of acting, interacting and transacting. Recent exhibitions include Rules of Engagement at West Space, +Plus Factors at ACCA and Mind Games at Conicle. Gabrielle is the founding editor of the Ideas Catalogue and is completing her Post Graduate Diploma at the VCA in the Film and Television School. For NEW08, Gabrielle will create a changing series of performance works that interrogate the intricacies of our everyday social encounters, performance and video works which strive for social change.
Paul Knight: Currently studying a Master of Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art as part of a Samstag scholarship, Knight will return home to show a series of new photographic and sculptural works for NEW08. Interested in human intimacy – how people relate to each other, their bodies and the environment around them – Knight works predominantly with photography and has exhibited widely, including at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Australian Centre for Photography, Neon Parc and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces.
Jonathon Jones: Based in Sydney, Jonathan Jones is an installation artist whose works focuses on the symbiotic relationship between the individual and its community. A member of the Kamilaroi and Wiradjuri language groups, Jones complex lightscapes create shadows akin to body paint and traditional mark-making. As well as featuring in numerous exhibitions, he has created major public art projects including a commission for Westpac’s new Sydney headquarters and is currently creating works for the AXA Building in Melbourne’s Docklands.
NEW08 – 12 March to 11 May, 2008
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 111 Sturt Street, Southbank.
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm. Weekends and public holidays 11am–6pm. Mondays by appointment.
Tel: 03 9697 9999. Admission: Free. www.accaonline.org.au
