Northern Window
curator: André LawrenceOdradekAEAF July to December 2013
The Northern Territory and South Australia share a common history, one that stretches beyond colonisation, co-governance, exploration, settlement and the defining of state lines, into Indigenous histories and Dreamtime. Where ongoing connections may be less apparent, with extreme polarities in cultures, climates, distances and landscapes, Northern Window seeks to highlight these relationship, develop new ones by showcasing artists whose practices are strongly influenced by the culture, society and environment of the NT, and aims to nurture an open-ended conversation between South Australian audiences and current, diverse and unique cultural production from the Northern Territory.
THE HOLE IN THE WALL GANG
James Dodd & Franck Gohier
Opening: Thursday 25 July, 6—8pmDates: 26 June—17 August 2013
Curator's & Artists' Talk: Friday 26 July, 2pm
Franck and James have known one another for more than a decade, professionally and personally. Dodd has made regular trips to Darwin and the Top End during this period, all the time investigating nuances of the local graffiti culture. Inherent in this subculture are stories and mythologies associated with individual gangs and the broader idea of gang culture.
The ‘hole in the wall gang’ relates to a story by Franck about a particular gang and includes elements unique to the city of Darwin. Dodd and Gohier have collaborated in the simple retelling of the story in a way that reflects their shared aesthetic tastes.
Curator Bio:André Lloyd Lawrence is a French-Australian emerging visual artist and independent curator born in the Northern Territory. He graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts degree (with Honours) from the University of South Australia in 2012 and is currently studying and Master of Arts Degree in Visual Art & Design (Curatorship).
Lawrence is establishing a profile as an independent curator, writer and project facilitator. He has been broadly investigating, through his French-Australian hybrid identity, the affective and often nebulous realms of self-assertion in relation to displacement, belonging, place and human narratives. He curated Amounting to Something for Nexus Multicultural Arts Centre in 2013.
Artist Bio:
James Dodd has exhibited widely across Australia in artist run, publicly funded and commercial spaces. His work traverses visual street culture, alternative use of urban space and existing gallery conventions. While pursuing a practice that centres on painting, Dodd explores built structures, mobile objects and numerous other elements. He has completed recent significant projects for the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide City Council and Splendour in the Grass festival.
Dodd teaches at Adelaide Central School of Art and works as part of a project known as the Australian Bureau of Worthiness. The ABW surveys compact socio-political landscapes and represents their findings as performance. James Dodd is represented by Ryan Renshaw Gallery in Brisbane and Hugo Michell Gallery in Adelaide.
Franck Gohier graduated from Northern Territory University in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Fine Arts. Gohier has exhibited since 1988. His works are represented in numerous collections including those of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Australian National Gallery, Canberra, Art Bank NSW, The Centre for the study of Political Graphics Los.Angeles, USA, Flinders University, Wollongong University, Wagga Wagga Regional Art Gallery, Charles Sturt University, Print Council of Australia, Casula Powerhouse, Griffith Artworks Qld, Charles Darwin University and The Northern Territory Museum and Art Gallery.
From 1992 to 1996, Gohier was a Printmaking Lecturer and Printmaking Technician in Fine Arts at Northern Territory University. Together with Leon Stainer and George Watts, Gohier established the Aboriginal Printmaking Workshops at N.T.U, which would later become Northern Editions at Charles Darwin University.
In 1997, Gohier established Red Hand Prints with Shaun Poustie as an open access studio offering free expert tuition to the community. Working with Aboriginal communities throughout the northern and central region of Australia, Red Hand continues to this day as a professional editioning program.
James Dodd Website:
http://james-dodd.com/
Odradek: Australian Experimental Art Foundation:
http://aeaf.org.au/exhibitions/odradekaeaf.html