PICA GUIDE SEP - NOV

PICA

SEP – NOV

2014

13 SEP – 2 NOV

EXHIBITIONS

Talented WA artist Erin Coates has been commissioned to re-shape the geography of PICA’s central gallery spaces through an ambitious installation inspired by the artist’s background in rock climbing and her interest in urban public space.

— Coates creates a new landscape inside PICA, connecting the ground and first floors with a 7 metre high mountainous structure housing a micro-cinema and surrounded by wall drawings, and an interactive climbing room with a 3D film embedded within it.

KINESPHERE, the title of the exhibition, refers to the area that the body is moving within and how the mover is paying attention to it.

Each element of the installation interacts with another: the central towering sculpture consists of tessellating lines based on the points of contact made during the artist’s own urban climbs; recordings of fellow climbers moving across the city’s built forms generate the shapes of cast interactive holds in the climbing room; and large diagrammatic wall drawings reveal a matrix of hidden routes and information about the city’s architecture and public art.

KINESPHERE blends utopic and radically reconceived notions of urban space with edgy and at times comical misappropriation of built structures. In doing so it questions and reimagines the way we might experience our urban environments.

KINESPHERE has been made possible through a Catalyst: Katherine Hannay Visual Arts Commission Grant.

This project has been supported by PICA's ART5000 Donor Program and the City of Perth.

Images: Left Erin Coates, Climbing Route Maps, 2013. Above Erin Coates, The Last Climber Alive Must Keep Herself Fit and Ready (Video Still), 2014.

GEORGE EGERTONWARBURTON ADMINISTRATION IS JUST OULIPIAN POETRY 13 SEP – 2 NOV Administration is just Oulipian Poetry is a significant solo exhibition by Western Australian born, Los Angeles-based artist, George Egerton-Warburton.

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A large architectural intervention will see carved pieces of the gallery walls suspended from a sprawling 7 metre mobile, an exploration of the ways in which our creative energies and small artistic gestures can affect the balance of power.

Egerton-Warburton’s interconnected installation will see the gallery filled with paintings, videos, sculptures and the scent of rain on dirt, as it collectively forms a sensorially charged, contemplative environment.

The artist is creating a world within a world where everything is literally held in the balance, but where, perhaps, the small joys and tiny tedious actions of the everyday administration of our lives can be considered poetic and artistic.

This project has been supported by the City of Perth and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. Image: George Egerton-Warburton, Run Artist Run, 2013. Installation view National Gallery of Victoria.

EXHIBITIONS

LAST WOMAN ALIVE Saturday 13 September, 3pm FREE EVENT Join WA artist Erin Coates and her team of climbers, engineers and sound artists in a journey that traverses art, architecture, sport and urban adventure. In a discussion led by PICA Curator Leigh Robb, this fearless collective will disclose the behind-the-scenes production processes and artistic concepts involved in the creation of KINESPHERE, Erin’s major new commission.

EVERYDAY POETRY Saturday 13 September, 4pm West End Gallery FREE EVENT George Egerton-Warburton returns to his hometown of Perth to discuss his solo show, Administration is Just Oulipian Poetry. In conversation with fellow artist and provocateur Dan Bourke, the pair will meditate on art’s often fraught relationship with politics, philosophy and theory.

TIM GREGORY: ENDURANCE LECTURE Tuesday 23 September, 6pm til late Education Studio FREE EVENT Tim Gregory, PICA’s studio artist at large, will perform a public endurance lecture about pornography. A speech that goes on too long is something we have all endured. From drunken wedding speeches to filibusters, long speeches are as compelling as they are excruciating. Gregory is a scholar of pornography (really!) and has lectured, exhibited and published on the topic. He understands the unique state in which pornography can be discussed academically while at the same time negotiating its taboo.

Gregory has delivered performance lectures at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Sydney Biennale.

Images: Top Erin Coates, Production still from Thigmotaxis, 2014. Middle George Egerton-Warburton, Steaming ties, 2013. Installation view at Artspace, Auckland. Above Tim Gregory, Convict, 2013.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

FALLING THROUGH CLOUDS THE LAST GREAT HUNT

Mary is a scientist, and every moment of every day she dreams about flying. She doesn’t have wings, but she does have a wild and dangerous imagination...

22 September – 11 October, 7:30pm* Preview: 22 & 23 September, 7:30pm Post show Q&A: 30 September PICA Performance Space

Falling Through Clouds is a visual epic told by some of Australia’s most innovative storytellers.

— From the award-winning creators of international hits The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer and It’s Dark Outside, comes a dark tale of reaching for the impossible.

Henry and Mary are captives.

Henry is a whooping crane, raised in captivity. He is one of the last of his kind, but he doesn’t know it. Henry is content in his simple life within the walls of his enclosure, until one day he discovers that there is a world beyond, and he is unable to resist the lure of escape.

Tickets Standard: $30 Preview, Concession & Members: $25 Recommended age: 15+ Bookings: pica.org.au or 08 9228 6300

Created and performed by: Adriane Daff, Arielle Gray, Chris Isaacs and Tim Watts Sound design by: Ash Gibson Greig Produced by: The Last Great Hunt * No shows Sunday or Monday. The Last Great Hunt are artists in residence from 11 August – 21 September.

This project has been supported by Malthouse Theatre, the State Government of Western Australia through the Department of Culture and The Arts and PICA's ART5000 Donors. Image: The Last Great Hunt, Falling Through Clouds Development, 2014. Pictured: Adriane Daff. Photo: Jamie Breen.

PERFORMANCE

LIQUID ARCHITECTURE PERTH Monday 6 October, 7pm (Doors open at 6pm) PICA Main Gallery Space Now in its 15th year, Liquid Architecture’s 2014 festival program brings together work from across a range of disciplines to audiences in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Singapore.

Makiko Yamamoto vocally performs Utterly Silent, Utter Silence, Utterly Something, or Utter Something, Thinking Thinking, Utterly Listening, Utterly Ummm, querying language and the voice.

Id M Theft Able (AKA Skot Spear) performs Blood, Blood, Jars of Blood, an experimental music performance using vocals in combination with sounds summoned from a range of amplified and unamplified objects, bent circuits, homebuilt keyboards and modified tape machines.

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Presented in partnership with Tura New Music and curated by Joel Stern and Danni Zuvela.

Alessandro Bosetti will perform Mask Mirror a piece which sits in the slippage between information and pure sound in speech. Bosetti uses a synthesiser to manipulate spoken word samples from field research, interviews, conversations and soliloquies, developing elaborate abstract live compositions.

Tickets Standard: $20 Concession & Members: $25 Bookings: pica.org.au or 08 9228 6300

NB: This event was incorrectly listed ad ‘FREE’ in the first print run of our PICA Guide - it is in fact a ticketed event.

Liquid Architecture is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council its arts funding and advisory body and the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria. Image: Alessandro Bosetti, Mask Mirror. Photo: Olivier Vadrot.

STUDIO RESIDENCIES 15 SEPTEMBER – 2 NOVEMBER

RESIDENCIES

DAN MCCABE

ROBERT TURPIN

Originally from Brisbane, this Perth-based artist has just returned from an international residency in Japan. Dan McCabe has been experimenting on the fringes of sculpture, photography, textiles and printmaking over the past 18 months, testing out lycra and polyester as surfaces. For his PICA residency, McCabe is planning to construct, deconstruct and rebuild large-scale sculptural and wall-based works that will constantly evolve over the two-month period.

A recent graduate from ECU, Robert Turpin is a committed and relentless painter, constantly experimenting with materials, processes and imagery. Splicing together references from sci-fi and album covers, Turpin’s visual vocabulary channels pop culture, creating unique otherworldly landscapes. He is interested in using the residency to make a totally new body of eclectic paintings.

TEELAH GEORGE

GERA WOLTJER

Since returning to Perth from Dublin, Teelah has been extraordinarily active in making discrete bodies of work that channel stories, anecdotes and strange histories.

Recently she has directly engaged with the archives and collections of the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art at the University of Western Australia. Her PICA residency will become a site for real dialogue, as she invites artists, curators, historians and writers to draw out their experience of PICA’s archives.

Originally from the Netherlands, Gera Woltjer has recently moved from Geraldton to Perth. Her work could be described as an expanded drawing practice. It is process based and also acutely physical, often involving lengths of rice paper and ink in a performative manner. Her PICA studio will become the site for a more open discussion with fellow artists and PICA visitors, as she makes new work for a solo exhibition through conversation, action and mark making.

TIM GREGORY RESIDENT AT LARGE Tim Gregory is a Sydney-based conceptual artist who works at the intersection of installation, performance and academic discourse. He is currently a lecturer at the College of Fine Art, UNSW and also has a collaborative practice with artist Oliver Watts. His focused two-week residency is a research oriented project which builds on his expertise around the spatio-political potentiality of pornography.

Images: Left Dan McCabe,Twin Peaks, 2013. Above Left Teelah George, Meteor (coming back is hard to do), 2012. Photo: Bo Wong. Middle Gera Woltjer, In The Wet (work in progress), 2013. Right Robert Turpin & Robyn Laycock, Circle of Dreams, Photo: Robyn Laycock.

STUDIO OPEN NIGHT Tuesday 21 October, 6pm Studios & Reading Room FREE EVENT Join PICA’s current artists in residence as they share their personal insights into their PICA residencies. Meet the artists in their studios at 6pm before heading downstairs to the PICA Reading Room at 6.30pm for a series of talks.

SPARK_LAB FOR STUDENTS SPARK_LAB EDUCATION TOURS Tuesday 23 September – Friday 24 October 45 – 60 Minutes PICA Galleries | FREE Spark_Lab offers students and teachers the opportunity to engage in free interactive tours of Erin Coates' exhibition KINESPHERE, and George Egerton-Warburton’s Administration is Oulipian Poetry, currently showing at PICA. Examining a selection of artworks, students will discuss the use of geography, film, installation, and sculpture in contemporary art as well as looking closely at the thematic content in these exhibitions.

Tours are also available to tertiary institutions and other community groups.

CURRICULUM LINKS Visual Art; Media, Language; Literature and Literacy; Health and physical education; History and Geography; Place, space and environment; Time and space; Rhythm and line; Size, scale, shape, pattern, proportion and orientation

CLIMBING WORKSHOPS FOR SCHOOLS Tuesday 23 September – Friday 24 October Times negotiable when booking 2.5 hours at PICA Maximum 24 participants per group $10 per student In response to Erin Coates' exhibition, writer, teacher, and climber Shevaun Cooley will lead students in a workshop on-site in the main gallery spaces at PICA. This includes a tour of the exhibition, the opportunity to interact physically within the climbing room and engage in storytelling related to mountains and climbing.

Tour & Workshop Bookings

Bookings are essential for all Spark_Lab activities.

To book tours and workshops contact PICA's Education Program Manager: education@pica.org.au or (08) 9228 6316 or go to pica.org.au for more information.

LEARNING

SCHOOL HOLIDAY WORKSHOPS

ART AND CLIMBING 7-10 year olds -Tuesday 7 October 11-14 year olds - Thursday 9 October All ages (family fun session) - Saturday 11 October All workshops 1.30pm - 3.30pm Maximum 15 participants per workshop Limited spaces – Bookings essential This school holidays, kids and teenagers have the opportunity to learn the self-paced technique of climbing as explored in Erin Coates’ exhibition KINESPHERE. This discipline encourages ways of seeing and experiencing the indoor environment through our movement within it.

Writer, teacher, climber and contributor to KINESPHERE Shevaun Cooley will lead students in a workshop on-site in the main gallery spaces at PICA. Join us as we explore the exhibition, climb the gallery walls and talk about mountains, climbing and art!

School Holiday Workshop Bookings $25 per participant Bookings: pica.org.au or phone 08 9228 6300

Images: Top Left George Egerton-Warburton, Dog, 2013. Installation view at Gertrude Contemporary. Below Left Erin Coates, Untitled (Barcelona Olympic tunnel climbing wall), 2013. Above Erin Coates, Thigmotaxis, 2014.

PERTH INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS — PERTH CULTURAL CENTRE, 51 JAMES ST, NORTHBRIDGE — TUE–SUN 10AM–5PM TEL +61 8 9228 6300 INFO@PICA.ORG.AU PICA.ORG.AU

Education Sponsor

Automotive Sponsor

Major Sponsor

PICA’s ongoing programs are primarily supported by an investment from the State of Western Australia through the Department of Culture and the Arts in association with Lotterywest, assistance from the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. PICA is supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.

Cover: Erin Coates, Thigmotaxis, 2014. Digital drawing on film still.

All images in the PICA Guide are courtesy and © the artists.