Art Guide interviews JULIE RRAP

JULIE RRAP, Drawn Out [installation view at ARC ONE], 2022, video, 12 minutes.

Art Guide writer Briony Downes sat down with JULIE RRAP to have a conversation on women’s liberation, feminist representations and the inspiration of her new video work ‘Drawn Out', which was a highlight of her recent solo exhibition at ARC ONE.

“I imagined it as a playful gesture where the traditional nude female life model draws herself. Now, seeing Secret Strategies, Ideal Spaces together with Drawn Out, I think there is a fantastic conversation across time; not only because my body is 35 years older but because it has liberated me from having to perform historical works. Now I am simply drawing for myself. The active quality of the video also animates the stillness of the early photographs.”

READ MORE in Julie Rrap on women’s liberation, performance and being a trickster

JULIE RRAP's 'Blow Back' featured in exhibition ‘We, Us, Them: CCP x Belfast Exposed’

Julie Rrap, ‘Blow Back #16’, 2018, digital print and handground glass, edition of 3 + 1 A/P, 1/3, 52 x 64 cm.

JULIE RRAP will be presenting ‘Blow Back’, in the exhibition ‘We, Us, Them: CCP x Belfast Exposed’ opening this Friday 18 February at the Centre for Contemporary Photography.

These portraits represent a collective performance act that uses breath as an action that is both gentle yet provocative. Operating as a localised form of expression for the community of women artists in Sydney that make up the subjects of the work, the performers open mouths mock the endless images of women posed in this way to suggest their receptivity; like a vessel waiting to be filled.

This exhibition is a CCP x Belfast Exchange collaboration conceived as part of the 2021—22 UK/Australia Season.

For more info: https://ccp.org.au/exhibition/we-us-them/

Five of ARC ONE artists are featured in the newly published 'Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia'

Anne Marsh, ‘Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia’, published on 2 November, 2021, by The Miegunyah Press.

Five of ARC ONE artists – ANNE ZAHALKA, EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS, PAT BRASSINGTON, JULIE RRAP and JACKY REDGATE are featured in the newly published ‘Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia’.

Providing a comprehensive analysis of women’s art movements in Australia from the 1960s onward, this remarkable book by art historian Anne Marsh chronicles the struggles, contestations and achievements of women and feminism in Australian visual arts history. The book also acts as an divergent investigation into how the “doing” of feminism has shaped contemporary art and culture at home and abroad.

“…art and feminism are cyclical; they spiral in and out of time, and it’s interesting to see these younger women, very schooled in theoretical frameworks, turning back to an earlier time, and asking: why aren’t we doing that anymore?” ——Anne Marsh in conversation with Susanna Ling.

JULIE RRAP AWARDED FELLOWSHIP IN NSW GOVERNMENT

Congratulations to Julie Rrap, who is one of five successful fellows in the NSW Government's Fellowship program!
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The New Dimensions: NSW Visual Arts (Established) Fellowship will support Julie Rrap with funding to allow her to focus on a self-directed professional development program, and also to undertake an additional project or acquisition commission from the MCA. This marks the third year of a partnership between Create NSW and MCA for the New Dimensions: NSW Visual Arts (Established) Fellowship.

The opportunity for Julie Rrap to develop a new body of work and program of research with the Fellowship is significant. This research and artwork will question how we “look” or “look away” when confronted by certain bodies. This is a very timely project for Rrap and an extension of a meaningful practice centred around challenging and questioning traditional expressions of the female body.

More information >

Portrait of Julie Rrap in her studio by Jacquie Manning⁠

JULIE RRAP CURATES 'THE OTHER PORTRAIT' AT UTS

Julie Rrap & Cherine Fahd, Give and Take [video stills], 2021, 4 channel video work;

Curated by Julie Rrap and Cherine Fahd, The Other Portrait has just opened across UTS Gallery and SCA Gallery.

Featuring new work by Julie Rrap, this exhibition brings together work by artists who have an established relationship to the concept and traditions of portraiture. Through existing and newly commissioned works, the exhibition provokes a new analysis of the self and the other and examines the ways artists draw on their bodies, families, communities, cultures and experiences to underscore the paradoxes of subjectivity. Located across two spaces – UTS Gallery and SCA Gallery – The Other Portrait proposes the self and the institution as sites in conversation.

More information >

PANEL DISCUSSION
Join Julie Rrap, Cherine Fahd, Rachel Kent, Lee Wallace and Patrick Pound for an afternoon exhibition viewing and discussion moderated by Stella Rosa McDonald. 

Tickets to panel discussion >

READ Art Guide REVIEW >

JULIE RRAP'S 'DOUBLE ECLIPSE' AT DARK MOFO

JULIE RRAP’s Double Eclipse (2015) is programmed at Dark Mofo, happening this week 16-20 June.

A great pair of eyes will begin to go blind, as if by solar eclipse – a metaphor for the power of the gaze, the blindness of desire, and a window to the mind of artist Julie Rrap.

The eyes are projected at 129b Bathurst St, in Dark Downtown.

Image courtesy of Darklab Media

JULIE RRAP'S FULL SERIES 'PERSONA AND SHADOW' AT NGA

JULIE RRAP was interviewed by Brisbane Times about her series ‘Persona and Shadow’ which is now on show in ‘Know My Name’ at the NGA.

When Julie first showed ‘Persona and Shadow’ in 1984, two of the works were acquired my the NGA. Last year, the remaining seven were obtained so that the full suite may hang in ‘Know My Name’. “You think of the whole series as one set of work”, says Julie, “so it’s significant for me, and I think for the institution, to collect substantial bodies of work like that by women artists."

These works were made after Rrap returned from Europe having seen two major contemporary art exhibitions where only one female artist was represented amongst approximately 80 men. In the photographs, Rrap acts out imagery from paintings by Edvard Munch in an investigation of the stereotypical depiction of women in art and, more widely, in society.

Read the full interview with Julie here.

'Know My Name' (Part 1) continues until 4 July 2021.

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JULIE RRAP INTERVIEWED ON 'THE ART SHOW'

For those that missed the insightful interview with Julie Rrap on Wednesday, this week’s ‘The Art Show’ is now available to stream via the ABC Listen App and on the web HERE >⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Julie reflects on her formative years as a young artist living in Sydney and Europe, and using her own body in her art practice. “It’s not an identity thing - I’m not an artist who’s trying to reveal something about myself. I’ve often spoken about what I do as more of a trickster, I act as a kind of vehicle,” she says. “When I see myself in an image, it’s almost like the third person - it goes through this transformative process in the making of art. It’s a representation, it’s not me.”

Listen back to hear about Julie’s time working for photographer John Delacour, the evolution of her ‘Overstepping’ concept, her interest in Cindy Sherman’s use of masquerade, and the importance of female role models in the art world.

Swipe through for images of the works Julie refers to in the conversation!

Portrait of the artist by Jacquie Manning

Julie Rrap, ‘360 degree self portrait’ [still], 2009, digital video, 10:42min

Julie Rrap, ‘Overstepping’, 2001, digital print, 100 x 100 cm

Julie Rrap, ‘“At Arm’s Length” Grip’, 2019, bronze, 10 x 28 x 53 cm

Installation view of ‘Disclosures’ exhibition at Central Street, Sydney 1982.

MGA 30 YEAR ANNIVERSARY CATALOGUE

'VIEW FINDING Monash Gallery of Art 1990—2020', designed by Pidgeon Ward.

The MGA recently launched a landmark 30 year anniversary publication - VIEW FINDING Monash Gallery of Art 1990—2020. 

This fully illustrated catalogue features image plates by ARC ONE artists Pat Brassington, Lyndell Brown & Charles Green, Rose Farrell & George Parkin, Robert Owen, Jacky Redgate, Julie Rrap, Lydia Wegner and Anne Zahalka. It charts the history of the gallery, its present, and the future of photography in Australia. 

Over the last 30 years MGA has developed one of Australia’s most important cultural assets — the only public collection solely dedicated to Australian photography. MGA’s artistic program has explored the diversity of photographic practice in Australia, and has placed Australian photographers and photography within a global context. 'View Finding' looks at the past, present and future of photography in Australia, presenting moments that have defined MGA, its collection and exhibition history.

A selection of leading lights who specialise in photography in Australia have contributed essays to the publication. You can purchase it here.

'SHADOW CATCHERS' REOPENS AT AGNSW

Shadow Catchers at Art Gallery of New South Wales is open once again!

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS, JACKY REDGATE & JULIE RRAP all have works in the this exhibition, which draws on the AGNSW collection to investigate the way shadows, body doubles and mirrors haunt our understanding of photography and the moving image.

There is a fantastic video guide of the exhibition narrated by senior curator of contemporary Australian art Isobel Parker Philip. This was filmed as part of the AGNSW’s Together in Art initiative, which seeks to create meaningful art encounters online.

Watch the video tour here >

Eugenia Raskopoulos, installation view of Diglossia seriees in Shadow Catchers at AGNSW, 2020

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS & JULIE RRAP AT THE AGNSW

EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS & JULIE RRAP are featured in the exhibition Shadow Catchers, opening today at the AGNSW. This exhibition investigates the ways shadows, body doubles and mirrors haunt our understanding of photography and the moving image.

Eugenia's Diglossia (2009) series is on display, along with Julie’s Body Double (2007).

The exhibition runs until 17 May.

More information >

JULIE RRAP

JULIE RRAP has put forward a proposal for the AGNSW facade commission. Julie was one of six women artists invited to create a concept for the empty space above the Gallery’s grand entrance, once intended for a decorative bronze panel that was never realised.

In 1913, the Gallery trustees commissioned the expatriate Australian artist Dora Ohlfsen (1869-1948) to sculpt a classical Greek chariot race in low relief for it. Though Ohlfsen worked on the piece for many years and her designs were approved, in 1919 the commission was abruptly cancelled. One hundred years later, the AGNSW is examining the original commission and some exciting contemporary proposals for the space.

In her concept, Rrap uses her own body to engage with issues of representation, gender and power.

Titled Walk out, Rrap’s panel appropriates the legs of five favourite sculptures in the AGNSW collection: those by Ugo Rondinone, Patricia Piccinini, Hans Bellmer, Louise Bourgeois & Michael Parekowhai. If developed further, Rrap would perform these figures, acting them out and casting her own legs in bronze.

In Walk out, Rrap uses surreal humour to destabilise. She refers to the relentless imaging of the body - especially the female body - within Western art history. These disembodied legs walk out in protest from the bastion of culture; or do they join our own to reenter the museum confidently, through the front door?

An exhibition of the proposed concepts runs until 8 March 2020.

More information >

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JULIE RRAP

Twisted Logic, Installation view, ARC ONE Gallery, 2019. Photo: John Gollings.

ARC ONE Gallery is delighted to present Twisted Logic, an exhibition of new sculptures by leading Australian contemporary artist Julie Rrap.  

Taking as its central theme the historical fact that bronze artworks were often melted down to create weapons and armour with this process potentially reversed in times of peace, Twisted Logic articulates the ambiguous relationship that can exist between culture and politics. Art can be created or destroyed depending on political regimes.

Using cast sections from the artist’s body, Rrap’s bronze Arti-facts suggest an originary sculptural pose now transformed into objects that exist in an uncertain space between weaponry and armament. The artist’s body becomes the ‘material’ for these sculptural works through direct silicon moulding and casting in bronze; the effect creates an amalgam of vulnerability and strength that highlights the body ‘within’ conflict.

“Beating your Breast” Plate [detail], 2019, bronze and steel, 106 x 40 x 28.5 cm.

Existing in a suspended performative state between forming and un-forming, these sculptures embody a transformative process evocative of both destructive and creative forces. By focusing on the proposition that artworks can both manipulate and be manipulated by political persuasion, Twisted Logic foregrounds the impact that real-world situations can have on artistic outputs. These works explore the ways in which art can be a ‘tool’ both for culture’s potential complicity with, and resistance to, real-world issues.  

This exhibition brings visual expression to the ongoing struggle in which the radical possibilities of art, to question and to challenge, can be silenced and possibly destroyed; it also suggests that art can re-form from the ashes of conflict.

Julie Rrap has been a central figure in Australian contemporary art for over four decades. Since the mid-1970s, she has worked with photography, painting, sculpture, performance and video in an ongoing project concerned with representations of the body.

In 1995, a survey of her work, Julie Rrap Works 1991–1995, was held at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, and in 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Art held a major retrospective, Julie Rrap: Body Double, curated by Victoria Lynn. Other solo exhibitions include Remaking the World, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne (2015); Rrapture, Newcastle Art Gallery (2014) and Julie Rrap: Off Balance, Lismore Regional Gallery (2011). 

Selected group exhibitions include Bodies of Art: Human Form from the National Collection, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2019); Dark Rooms: Women Directing the Lens 1978-98, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane (2018); Every Brilliant Eye: Australian Art of the 1990s, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2017); Lurid Beauty: Australian Surrealism and its Echoes, National Gallery of Victoria (2015); Biometrics, New Media Gallery, Anvil Centre, Vancouver (2014); Theatre of the World, Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania; and La Maison Rouge, Paris (2013–2014); Volume One: MCA Collection, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2012); 14th Jakarta Biennale (2011); The Naked Face: Self-Portraits, The Ian Potter Centre, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2011); The Trickster, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea (2010); Reframing Darwin: evolution and art in Australia, Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne (2010); Turbulence: 3rd Auckland Triennial, Auckland, New Zealand (2008); Revolutions – Forms that Turn, 16th Biennale of Sydney (2008); Fieldwork: Australian Art 1968–2002, National Gallery of Victoria, Federation Square, Melbourne (2003); Body, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (1998); Systems End: Contemporary Art in Australia, The Dong Ah Gallery, Seoul, Korea, Hakone Open Air Gallery, Tokyo, Japan and Oxy Gallery, Osaka, Japan (1996); and Photography is Dead! Long Live Photography, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (1995).

Monograph publications include Julie Rrap: Body Double, Victoria Lynn’s book to coincide with the MCA exhibition (co-published by Piper Press and the MCA) and Julie Rrap, also a Piper Press publication, 1998. 

Julie Rrap’s work is held in every major public collection in Australia as well as many corporate and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, France, and the U.S.A.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

JULIE RRAP

Julie Rrap in her Sydney studio. Photo: Jacquie Manning.

JULIE RRAP is featured in the Collector's Dossier in the new issue of Art Collector Magazine, on sale now.

In the feature, Julie discusses her four decades of practice and her upcoming exhibition at ARC ONE, Twisted Logic. The show will feature ambiguous bronze elements, cast from her body, that could be read as either weapons or armour; exploring what Rrap describes as 'that quite slippery relationship between art, culture, and any particular political regime or system that happens to be in power.'

ARC ONE co-director, Fran Clark, who has worked with Rrap since 1999, recalls seeing her work for the first time: 'I was immediately struck by this artist's unique creativity; an artist of intelligence producing strong and iconic art with an excellent grip on that ever-elusive quality, humour.'


Twisted Logic shows at ARC ONE from 3 September - 5 October.

Read the article online here >

JULIE RRAP

Opening today at Blue Mountains City Art Gallery is the exhibition with every breath, featuring JULIE RRAP's work Blow Back.

with every breath presents work by 15 artists who encourage us to be still, breathe, reflect and listen. The idea of breath is beautifully captured in Julie Rrap’s suite of photographs, Blow Back, where the artist has etched the breath of 33 female artists, friends and contemporaries on the frame’s glass. Five other ARC ONE artists posed as Rrap's subjects in this work!

The exhibition continues until 25 August.

More information >

Interview with the curator >

JULIE RRAP

Julie Rrap, ‘Stepping Out,’ 2012, bronze and metallic paint, 16 x 25 x 28 cm

JULIE RRAP's work Stepping Out is included in Simon Denny's exhibition Mine opening at MONA tomorrow. The exhibition revolves around mining as a reflection of hope and anxiety about the environment, technology, and development.

Stepping Out recalls Rrap's iconic foot image Overstepping (2001). In both works she extends an image of her feet, transforming them into a pair of stiletto heels. Rrap's high-heeled feet represent a futuristic speculation on where genetic engineering and cosmetic surgery may lead us.

This exhibition opening is part of the Dark Mofo programme. It will continue into the evening, with live music from 4pm.

PAT BRASSINGTON | JULIE RRAP | HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT

Pat Brassington, The Wedding Guest, 2005, pigment print, 84 x 62 cm.

PAT BRASSINGTON, JULIE RRAP and HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT are included in In Her Words at Horsham Regional Art Gallery, opening this weekend. .

In Her Words focuses on women behind and in front of the camera. Women who are in control of their own story; whether they are speaking their own truth or re-enacting the accounts of others. The exhibition aims to get to the core of the female experience, rights and challenges. The exhibition continues until 19 May.

More information>

JULIE RRAP

Image: Julie Rrap, Puberty from the series Persona and Shadow, 1984, cibachrome print, edition of 9, 194 x 105 cm.

JULIE RRAP’S Puberty from the series Persona and Shadow is included in Bodies of art: Human form from the national collection at The National Gallery of Australia.

The exhibition considers the human figure as one of the most enduring subjects of art. By exploring contrasting figures together in one space, this display reflects both the significance of the human body as a subject for art and reveals its range of uses over time.

More information >

JULIE RRAP

Julie Rrap, Yaw, 2004, pure pigment prints on acid-free rag paper, 167 x 152 cm.

JULIE RRAP is included in the exhibition Compass at the MCA, Sydney.

Curated by Clothilde Bullen, the exhibition draws works from the MCA collection considering the trajectories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women practices in dialogue with one another. "Aboriginal artists illustrate their distinctive relationships to their cultures and Countries and provide commentary on the multiple, interlocking oppressions of what it means to be a black woman in Australia. Non-Aboriginal artists narrate concepts around the presentation of women in contemporary western society; utilising the figure and forms of the self to reflect universal themes of ‘being’ and ‘doing’ female."

Compass opens on 9 November 2018, continuing until 3 February 2019.

For more information, click here.

ROBERT OWEN, JULIE RRAP & ANNE ZAHALKA

Robert Owen, 'Feeling Form (Blind Carving)', 1958, plaster of paris, 7.5 x 18 x 9.5cm.

ROBERT OWEN, JULIE RRAP and ANNE ZAHALKA are included in the exhibition 'National Art: Part One' at the National Art School Gallery'.

A review of the exhibition, with a photograph of Anne Zahalka standing in front of her work 'Outlawed!' was published in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday.

Pictured is one of Robert Owen's blind carving sculptures he did at the National Art School from 1958.

The exhibition continues until October 27.

More information >