Selected works from RMIT Culture collections and International Collections

Link to artwork: http://franknoelker.com/collection/chimp-portraits

Frank Noelker, Chimp Portraits: Toddy, 2002-2006 This is Toddy, a 28-year-old chimpanzee. Born in Africa, in infancy she was sold to a family as a pet, who discovered bullet fragments in her head – likely shrapnel from her mother’s death and Toddy’s subsequent capture. Passed as a pet from family to family then to roadside zoo to breeding farm, she surely carries a history that is marked by abuse and torture. 
Growing up in Sydney Australia I remember going to art exhibitions. One particularly stuck with me – similar to this photo, it was a collection of portraits of chimpanzees. Many people criticised the exhibition as humanising or anthropomorphising these creatures. But I’d like to turn that equation on its head and instead animalise humans. To recognise and accept that, like Toddy we are animals in life and death.

Link to artwork: https://artcollection.rmit.edu.au/?p=rmit-gallery-search#details=ecatalogue.509

Danila Vassilieff
, Murray River, 1955 Vassilieff artworks have fascinated me for many years now. The muted warm colour pallet feels reassuring and familiar. But the turning face- almost to look behind- with ill-defined boundaries lends a gravity to the work.

Danila Vassilieff
 Murray River, 1955 
Gouache and watercolour on light weight wove paper 30.3 x 40.4 cm

Purchased by the RMIT School of Art, 1976 Edward Collection, RMIT University Art Collection

Works by Sacha Shaw

Climate dreaming

Climate Dreaming is an attempt to capture and to visually comprehend some the often devastating and traumatic aspects of anthropogenic climate change. As a student, and as an activist I am frequently confronted with the troubling realities the climate crisis. 

The footage tracks two days of my life during Melbourne’s stage four lockdowns. The window, which I have become almost too familiar with, represents a troubling mind, my mind, my future, my inaction, your inaction, my hopelessness. Climate Dreaming documents the descent into a real-world nightmare.

Video link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcJLem6Zc-w&ab