Transmutation, 2003
Introduction
I am an artist, writer and curator who lives in Hobart, Tasmania.
Creating predominately mixed media and installation work, my art and research focuses on uncovering and re-presenting often conflicting and subsumed histories. Much of my work refers to the impacts of colonialism, and seeks to understand what happened in Australia during the first decades of the 1800s.
Recent projects
In November 2009 I was awarded the Redlands Art Prize, NSW. http://www.redlands.nsw.edu.au/go/redlands-community/redlands-westpac-art-prize
During late 2009 I undertook a residential Fellowship at Manning Clark House in Canberra where I transcribed for online publication 1820-1850s Van Diemen's Land depositions held in the National Library in Canberra. The resulting website is: http://manuscript3251.wordpress.com/about/
In 2008-09 I was guest curator at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery for the exhibition: Tayenebe – Tasmanian Aboriginal women’s fibre work that opened in July 2009 and is touring nationally through 2010-2011. http://static.tmag.tas.gov.au/tayenebe/
In September the 2009 Clemenger Contemporary Art Award opened in the National Gallery of Victoria, Federation Square, Melbourne in which I created the installation Forcefield 2. The exhibition is open until 7 February 2010.
http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/clemenger2009/juliegough.html
Galleries representing my work in Australia are:
Melbourne - Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, 3/75-77 Flinders Lane, Melbourne http://www.gabriellepizzi.com.au
Hobart - Bett Gallery, 369 Elizabeth Street, North Hobart
http://www.bettgallery.com.au/
Perth - Turner Galleries, 470 William St, Northbridge
http://www.turnergalleries.com.au/
Background
I am an Adjunct Research Fellow for the School of Creative Arts, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland where in 2005 - 06 I was a lecturer in Visual Arts.
During 2007 - 08 I undertook research fellowships from the Arts and Craft Board of the Australia Council for the Arts, the State Library of Tasmania, and the State Library of Victoria.
Previous employment includes Curator of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Victoria; lecturer at Riawunna - Centre for Aboriginal Studies at the University of Tasmania, Launceston; Interpretation Officer - Aboriginal Culture at the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service, Hobart.
In 2001 I was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy from the School of Art, University of Tasmania, Hobart (Transforming histories: the visual disclosure of contentious pasts). Prior studies include: Master of Fine Arts University of London Goldsmith’s College 1998, Bachelor of Fine Arts (first class Honours) University of Tasmania 1994, Bachelor of Visual Arts Curtin University West Australia 1993, Bachelor of Arts (Prehistory and English Literature) University of West Australia 1986.
A 26 minute dvd documentary: "We walked on a carpet of stars" and a 2 x dvd and 1 x cd "Julie Gough: Educational Resource Pack" (2007) for tertiary and secondary art schools/lecturers/teachers is available from creative cowboy films: http://www.creativecowboyfilms.com
Julie Gough
Hobart, Tasmania
November 2009
My contact details:
julie.gough@jcu.edu.au
More about the art making
My art and research practice often involves uncovering and re-presenting historical stories as part of an ongoing project that questions and re-evaluates the impact of the past on our present lives. My work is concerned with developing a visual language to express and engage with conflicting and subsumed histories.
A key intention is to invite a viewer to a closer understanding of our continuing roles in, and proximity to unresolved National stories- narratives of memory, time, absence, location and representation.
My works utilise found and constructed objects and techniques from diverse sources including the visual arts, the museum, the library, the shop, the garden and my heritage. Much of my influence and inspiration comes from the people, stories, places, skills of and connections to my maternal Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage.
I create work by reusing natural materials and found, often kitsch, objects. I particularly enjoy responding to and reconfiguring natural materials including wood, stone, kelp, bark, shell into narratives that relate their original environment and my own and ancestors' encounters, actions and traces in these places with these same types of materials.
One of my common methodologies is to arrange multiple objects to activate a surface optically, to encourage a viewer to read it as a means of temporarily holding the objects in place to find themselves part of the work. Art works comprising multiple objects are experiments in understanding how viewers can travel around a work and in this process move their position back and forth, flickering between past and present, and hopefully, personal and national memory.
Most of my works incorporate ideas of movement or stasis either technically or in the story that they may be partially relating to the viewer. This suggestion of waiting or of motion intends to summon an onlooker to enter into the work as a timekeeper. This is anxious position. Many materials invite curiosity and may initially afford humour but configured they together accrue a sinister edge as a viewer reaches a point of understanding his/her caged predicament within the work.
These art works are investigations of the place of memory, forgetting, loss, denial and the potency of the past within my own family. I increasingly use open narrative to decipher self in the process of relating the past. Each work has been built from the outcomes of the last, and represents a claiming within a larger consideration of ways to personally invoke and involve nation, viewer and self in acknowledging our entangled histories.