Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris and Marcel Cooper

THANK YOU TO ALL OUR SUPPORTERS! WE DID IT!                                                                                                                               The Project                                                                                                                                                                             Bellowing Echoes is an exhibition, publication and live event curated by Marcel Cooper and Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris to be held at Gertrude Contemporary Melbourne as part of the 2012 Next Wave Festival.

The project explores the stories left behind, truths untold and uncovers our immortal need for connection to place and community. As the colony of Port Phillip emerges in 1838 our young local hero and newspaper man George Arden rises and falls in his quest to politicise and reflect upon his new environment.

Hosted by Gertrude Contemporary, leading Australian artists take our 1800’s avatar as a guide through a temporal wanderlust of immersive installation and process orientated works. Featuring Jess Johnson, Anna Kristensen, Tessa Zettel and Karl Khoe, The Slow Art Collective, and Marcin Wojcik, Bellowing Echoes takes us to a place where time is unhinged and our realities transformed.

Parallel to the exhibition sits a reinvented Port Phillip Gazette. First published by George Arden in the 1830s, our 2012 edition features local and international responses to fictional truths, failures and connections to Australian history and landscape. During the Festival we invite you to meet the artists and writers from Bellowing Echoes for an afternoon of live performance and social sculpture at Gertrude Contemporary.

Follow the Bellowing Echoes to a place of familiarity, the unknown and the unimagined.

Your help

We would greatly appreciate your support in this venture. We hope to raise $3000 to go directly towards artist fees and material costs, printing the 2012 edition of the Port Phillip Gazette plus freight and catalogue costs.                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

This project is a huge milestone for our careers as emerging curators. We have curated many projects together in the past but this one is particularly special. Exploring narrative based experiential works; the project delves into themes that we are very passionate to present.

Exhibited at one of the most important galleries in Melbourne, Gertrude Contemporary, and as part of the Next Wave Festival, Australia’s leading contemporary arts organisation for young and emerging artists, this is the most exciting curatorial project we have undertaken and would love to invite you to be a part of it.

                      Image: previous work by Marcin Wojcik                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

More Information

This project is the recipient of the 2012 Next Wave Emerging Curators Award, a competitve and prestigious mentorship and curator development program. The exhibition will be held at Gertrude Contemporary Melbourne from April 20 – May 27, 2012.  

You can follow our blog www.bellowingechoes.tumblr.com, or email us at [email protected] to find out more.

About the Gallery

Gertrude Contemporary is valued nationally and respected internationally as a dynamic centre for the production and presentation of contemporary art. With the artist placed firmly at the centre of our community, Gertrude fosters a culture of risk, collaboration and critical-thinking to generate innovative programs that engage audiences in creative exchange.

About the Festival

Through development programs and biennial Festival, Next Wave assists emerging artists to realise extraordinary new work that invites us to see the world and ourselves in unexpected ways. Next Wave programs support young artists to take creative risks, establish critically-engaged professional practices and launch their work into a wider artistic and public domain. Next Wave commissions and presents genre-busting projects both within and outside conventional artistic spaces.

About Us

Marcel Cooper and Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris’ curatorial collaboration began in 2008 whilst both studying a Masters of Art Administration at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney. With art making backgrounds in sculpture and performance Marcel and Bronwyn are now interested in large scale installation and experiential works often dealing with post-colonial themes and queer subversions of history. Through exhibition and events they are committed to furthering the dialogue in contemporary hybrid practice and exploring innovative curatorial strategies.

Select exhibition and events include: (2011) Fail Harder, Kings ARI, Melbourne,  Panaramrama, Somewhere Gallery, Melbourne, (2010) Women In Piracy, Kudos Gallery, Sydney, (2009) Curator Assistants - Once Removed, Venice Biennale, Venice, Dark Hall, The Glorious Undead Festival, Kudos Gallery, Sydney, Diorama Drama, Somedays Gallery, Sydney, Flight of Fancy, Kudos Gallery, Sydney.                                

                Image: previous work by Jess Johnson                                                                                                                                                

The Exhibition

Under the guidance of our curatorial mentors, Bellowing Echoes has evolved into a strong and comprehensive creative exchange involving an exhibition, a publication and a live event. The project expands perceptions of time while experimenting with sincere community engagement, connection to landscape and place and investigates narrative based installation, performance and process based works.

The Artists

The exhibition features five installation and process based works and actions from leading emerging and established practitioners. Support from you would allow us to further support these artists and their works.

Jess Johnson

Born in 1979 in Tauranga, New Zealand, Jess currently lives in Melbourne where she is an artist, writer and founder of a gallery called Hell. Jess has a multi disciplinary art practice that sees her explore drawing, comics, installation art and temporal process orientated events.

Select recent exhibitions include: (2011) Where There Is Smoke There Is Fire, Death Be Kind Gallery,(2010) Knowing You, Knowing Me: New Artist Show, Artspace, Auckland NZ ,No Soul For Sale; A Festival of Independents, Tate Modern, UK, Harrell Flectcher: The Sound We Make Together, NGV, Melbourne, Walk The Line: New Australian Drawing, MCA, Sydney, Hell Is Other People, Inflight Gallery, Tasmania, Home Is Where My Hell Is, Switchback Gallery,GCAD, Gippsland, Flippin Heck, Hell Gallery Melbourne,(2008) Robert Jacks Drawing Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo, Honk if you Love Contemporary Art, Ryan Renshaw Gallery, Brisbane, Who Cut The Cheese: Two Giants ofContemporary Art Talk Frankly Of Monumental Tasks, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, Hellraiser: The Director’s Cut, Hell Gallery, Melbourne.

Anna Kristensen

Born in 1983 in Sydney, Anna studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney and completed her Master of Fine Arts in Painting also at the College of Fine Arts in 2008.is a painter whose work draws on the imaginative and transformative potential of the Australian landscape and the various mythologies surrounding it. Anna has expanded these interests into a three dimensional installation where the structure shifts the traditional viewing experience by placing the viewer within the painting itself, not outside the frame looking in and referencing panoramas of the 1800s. This work ‘Indian Chamber’ will be shown in Melbourne for the first time in Bellowing Echoes.

Select recent exhibitions include: (2011) Mise en Abyme, Kalimanrawlins, Melbourne, Indian Chamber, Shepparton Art Museum, Victoria, and Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, NSW, and Gallery 9, Sydney, Helen Lempriere Travelling Scholarship Exhibition, Artspace, Sydney, Just Imagine, Wollongong City Gallery, Illuminations and Bad Faith, Bondi Pavilion Gallery, (2010) Phenomenononon, Melbourne Art Fair, Uplands Gallery and Gallery, (2008) Supernatural Monuments, Locksmith Project Space, Vision Quest, Gallery 9 Sydney, (2007) Cave Painting, Galerie Elena Kolbasina, Berlin.

Tessa Zettel and Karl Khoe

Born in 1980 in Sydney, Australia Tessa and Karl both live and work in various locations and are currently on residency at the IASKA Spaced program in Esperance, Western Australia. Tessa and Karl both hold a Bachelor Design with Honours from the College of Fine Arts.With a particular interest in social and environmental sustainability, architecture and urban design, Tessa and Karl embrace an improvisational process to create portable, participatory and site-specific works that explore people’s shifting relationship to place, history and the natural world.

Select recent exhibitions include: (2011) Primavera, MCA, Sydney, Helen Lempriere Travelling Scholarship Exhibition, Artspace, Sydney, Try this at Home, Object Gallery Sydney, My Own Private Neon Oasis, Museum of Brisbane, John Fries Memorial Prize, Blackfriars Off Broadway, Sydney, Sister City Biennial: Urbanition, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco/CarriageWorks, Sydney, The Right to the City, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney. (2010) Experiments of Plant Hybridization, Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne, In the Balance: Art for a Changing World, MCA Sydney, Making Time, P4(pilot) Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth, Colony Collapse, Firstdraft, Sydney, Make-do Garden City, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney.

Slow Art Collective: Tony Adams, Chaco Kato, Ash Keating, Dylan Martorell is an artistic collective that focuses on creative practices and ethics relating to environmental sustainability, material ethics, DIY culture and collaboration intertwining art, architecture, music and environmentalism.

Select recent exhibitions include: (2011) Try this at home, Object Gallery, Sydney, Shelter@McDonald’s Drivethrough – as a satellite project of MisDesign, The Brunswick Project, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick, (2010) Watershed: Mapping the Yarra, Site Specific to the Yarra River, Melbourne (2009) TS2, Incinerator Arts Complex, Moonee Ponds

Marcin Wojcik

Born in 1988 in Melbourne, Marcin completed his Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) in Sculpture at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2010.Underpinned by a continued exploration of identity, Marcin’s practice spans sculpture, installation, performance and video. His works employ theatrical devices such as role-play, accoutrements, scenes and backdrops to draw viewers into performative spaces that deconstruct the nature of mise-en-scène, painting the identities of both viewer and artist into these scenes

Select recent exhibitions include: (2011)Scene: Crevasse, Bus Projects, Melbourne, Hidden Definition,Sutton Project Space, Melbourne, Cashmere if you can, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne, Sturt’s Boat, The Art Vault, Mildura (2010) Bus@Blindside: Play with your Food, Blindside, Melbourne.

Image 'Indian Chamber' by Anna Kristensen                                                                                                                                                 

The Publication

An integral part of Bellowing Echoes is the take-home publication. The 2012 Port Phillip Gazette is based upon a Melbourne newspaper from 1838, when the colony here was first taking shape. A young entrepreneur and poet by the name of George Arden began the political paper with its motto being ‘To assist the inquiring, animate the struggling and sympathise with all’.

Released as three editions during the duration of the Bellowing Echoes exhibition, the Gazette features literary and visual responses to fictional truths, histories re-made, failures and connections to Australian history and landscape.

Designed by a new local design collective; Copy Boy - Naasicaa Larsen and Geoff Riding, the publication pays homage to Melbourne’s literary past and celebrates its current status as an active UNESCO City of Literature.

Publication Artists

Kirsty Hulm, Sam Icklow, Carl Scarse, Amelia Bateman, Elvis Richardson, The Holy Trinity Collective, Hanna Tai, Laith McGregor, Annie Wu.

                 Image by Sam Icklow                                                                                                                                                

The Live Event

Entitled The Rise of the Wormhole Sailor, this event will bring elements of the publication and installations to life. Drawing upon theatrical and performative practices, The Rise of the Wormhole Sailor blends the boundaries of contemporary art, literature, activism allowing the artists and audiences to engage in a layered experience of the project as a whole and empowers our imagination. The live event will be scheduled during the exhibition at Gertrude and will be programmed into the Next Wave Festival.