Exhibitions
Works from The Art Collection are regularly lent to other institutions and art galleries for exhibitions. From time to time the Art Collection develops touring exhibitions. Art as Social Document 1990-1991, Guy Grey-Smith's Landscapes of Western Australia 1996, which was a major national retrospective, Listen to the Land 1998-2003 (this exhibition toured nationally with the help of Visions funding), About Face 2000-2002, Animalistic 2003-2005 and Minerals, Miseries, Miracles and Miners - Art from the Edith Cowan University Art Collection 2006 .
Public Art
Public display of commissioned artworks and the Joondalup campus sculpture park.
Virtual Gallery
Click here to look at ECU's virtual art gallery.
Archived Exhibitions
Public Art
In 1995, through Curatorial Services, the University commissioned its first site specific artwork for the foyer entrance to the new Mount Lawley Campus Library. Using symbols, icons, and images artist Lesley Duxbury developed a mass of cast metal wall pieces which convey communication, language and text. The Sport and Recreation Building at Joondalup has a wonderful set of gargoyles made by artist Adrian Jones and Andrew Leslie has been commissioned to intergrate his minimalist works with the building of the Health and Sciences Building at Joondalup campus. The University has an on going commitment to commissioning site specific artworks as an integral part of campus development.
Gargoyles & Optical Illusions
New York is full of them and so are the great medieval cathedrals of Europe but it will come as a surprise to know that Edith Cowan University's second major art commission for the Sport and Recreation Building at Joondalup is a wonderful set of gargoyles made by artist, Adrian Jones.
If you think that gargoyles are out of place in a contemporary building, remember that one of the great symbols of modernist architecture, the Chrysler Building, has enormous ones up on each corner.
What is the connection between these ancient, even pagan sybols and an ultra modern sporting complex?
According to Adrian Jones, they repressent the balancing of body and brain required to achieve the coordinated physical effort of sport. The faces are recognisably human, yet equally mythological; their expressions range though the pleasure, anticipation, joy surprise, shock and pain of physical exertion. To some extent, they take on the appearance of trophies; the ultimate reward for effort.
Each piece has an individual character fashioned from cast sheet aluminium. The overt decoration is deliberate as Adrian Jones knows that craft is a way of drawing people into the concept of the work. He also believes that ornamentation has been overlooked in the second part of the twentieth century and that its value needs to be re-assessed.
In contract to this, Edith Cowan University's third major art commission, which is currently at the developmental stage, will be a series of abstract, minimalist works integrated with the building form.
The Health and Sciences Building at Joondalup campus will be dynamic and ecologically aware with alternative energy sources and building management systems such as on site water harvesting, low energy air conditioning, and waste re-cycling. The feel of the building will be young and progressive and so will the art works.
By working directly with the architects, artist Adrew Leslie has developed a series of two and three dimensional patterns that are indivisible from the building structure; for example, in the entry foyer the stair treads become one part of a complex inter-relationship between horizontal and vertical planes. At first these may seem like a simple grid like pattern but the subtle use of reflected light on the vertical painted columns adjacent to the stairs, will reveal some thing much more complex.
Adrew Leslie's art explores the 'relationship between surface and depth, between appearance and reality'1. Works change from one angle to another. As the viewer moves so too does the art.
On a busy campus these works will, on one level offer a direct and satisfying symmetry; but for those who take the time to contemplate and consider, a more complex beauty will be revealed.
1JULIAN GOODARD. 'Beyond the Grid'. Exhibition Catalogue. International Art Space, Kellerberrin. 1999
Sculpture Park
'Marble Bun' by Rodney Glick
Abstract marble sculpture commissioned in 2003 and installed in 2004.
This marble sculpture was based on the machine-made copy of an original hand-carved block of polyurethane foam. A doppelganger of the absent, hand-carved template, an ironic and poetic contrast between the classical and high-art connotations of marble and the unpretentious ordinariness of the original carved form. A further ironic twist is that the hand-crafted treatment was applied to the cheap industrial material and not the 'noble' traditional medium as one would expect. Typically Rodney Glick! This work was exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney prior to being installed in our Sculpture Park Joondalup.
'Oneness' by Ron GombocFirst shown at the prestigious Sculpture by the Sea exhibition in Bondi 2003 and installed in our Sculpture Park in 2005.
Meaning of this artwork - 'being one whilst retaining individuality in unity'. Materials stainless steel and copper. This work was not commissioned - just purchased from the artist.
'Lotus' by Nigel Helyer
A floating sound sculpture in the lake on our Joondalup campus. This was installed in December 2006.
ART IN HEALTH & SCIENCES: OVERCOMING FEAR OF THE 'C' WORD
Collaboration is a word that can terrorise both artists and architects. Problems relating to egos, different philosophies, ownership, and even copyright can seem insurmountable. Site specific artwork, although theoretically designated an integral part of the building, is more often than not an addition rather than an inclusion.
This is one of the reasons that the artwork in the new Science and Health Building, due for completion in November 2000, on the Joondalup Campus is so significant. In this instance, the art and the artwork are truly indivisible. The artist was involved with the building design process from a very early stage, thus ensuring that the artwork is way beyond being a decorative addendum and is totally at one with the building structure itself. In fact the architects, Jones Coulter Young, and artist, Andrew Leslie, developed such a strong working relationship that they were able to solve a difficult architectural problem by using the artwork as part of the solution.
The building is highly flexible and allows for potential future changes as technology also changes. It has also been designed with a strong focus on ecologically sustainable principles and energy usage. The design is a highly sculptural structure in five primary portions. Two rectangular wings facing north and south house laboratory and teaching functions. A curved and faceted building wraps itself across the west face creating an exciting and dynamic external facade and a sinuous curved entrance foyer three storeys high. Within this foyer are structural columns, which double as an elegant and powerful artwork. Originally, these columns were hidden in office spaces in positions that were not very suitable. Moving them into the foyer solved the space problem and gave Andrew the opportunity to expand his two major concepts for the building: column and light, onto a truly awesome scale.
The second artwork is part of the biomechanics 'box' on the west side of the complex. The lecture theatre, a splayed, curved element completes the complex. What is overwhelmingly apparent when looking at how this art and architecture meld, is that this has been achieved, not only through the talent of both artist and architects, but also through their good will and willingness to share and compromise. What is even more interesting is that compromise, in the sense of true teamwork, has led to work that is strengthened in all aspects of its intention, and not compromised at all, in the more negative sense of being watered down, or of a lesser quality.
This commission is the third in a series of site specific works for new buildings for Edith Cowan University. The confidence required by the University to allow the artist to develop the work without knowing exactly what the end result would be shows both courage and maturity. When you see the artworks and buildings completed you will know that this has paid off handsomely.
Maggie Baxter is an independent curator and art coordinator who has worked in the area of public art for ten years. She assisted the University with commissioning this artwork.
About Face
Portraits from the Edith Cowan University and The City of Bunbury Art Collections
A FULL FACIAL TREAT!
LET’S FACE IT here is an exhibition that’s IN YOUR FACE, celebrating the diversity of portraits over a seventy-year time span. The Portraits show a great variety of techniques and media from exquisitely detailed studies through to some wild surreal interpretations. There are oils and acrylic, pen and ink, charcoal, wax, pencil, prints, lino cuts, etchings and crazy collage.
In this FACE TO FACE collaboration between ECU and the Bunbury Regional Art Galleries there are over 50 portraits. The exhibition includes many famous Western Australian artists who have done portraits of themselves or other interesting people — Arthur Russell, Tom Gibbons, Brian McKay, Kate O’Connor, Jo Darbyshire, Rolf Harris, Julie Dowling, Sidney Nolan, Charles Blackman to name a few.
Since ABOUT FACE opened at the Bunbury Regional Art Galleries in July 2000 it has been seen at The Fremantle Arts Centre (December/January 2001), the Katanning Art Gallery (March 2001), Geraldton Regional Art Gallery (April 2001), Mandurah Art Gallery in the Performing Arts Centre (July 2001), Goldfields Art Centre (October/November 2001). In December it will be at the Old Cannery Arts Centre, Esperance. The tour will conclude at the Vancouver Arts Centre, Albany in March/April 2002.
To date over 10,000 visitors have seen this show.
Exhibition Curator: Allison Archer
The Australian Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame
The Edith Cowan University Art Collection has lent 22 art works to the recently opened Federation Funded Australian Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame in Kalgoorlie. Lorraine Fitzpatrick consultant project officer of Hall of Fame displays approached Curatorial Services when it became apparent that this new building contained an ideal exhibition space for art works. The selection of works celebrates prospecting and mining in the Australian landscape.
Artists bring a unique way of seeing and understanding the land and the ways in which people interact with the environment.
They devise and use particular palettes of colour, forms or symbology to translate ways of seeing and understanding the mining landscape and activities. As Robert Juniper explained in 1969, "I paint not so much the appearance of the landscape but my feelings about it"."
Allan Baker and Rolf Harris have both captured the spirit of the miner and placed them in the environment, in which they lived and worked. Bevan Honey’s sculpture (Six rusted shovels with the Eureka flag printed on them) deliberately connects the historically hard work of mining with the principle of egalitarianism so treasured by Australians but won at the cost of miners lives.
Fred Williams and Robert Juniper both expressed their view of the Australian landscape as being seen from an aerial perspective creating vast expanses of space and colour with abstracted marks to represent the presence of living things.
Listen to the Land
Aboriginal Art from the Edith Cowan University Art Collection
Funded by Visions Australia and touring nationally to 12 venues.
This exhibition, Listen to the Land brings together for the first time more than one hundred paintings, prints, bark paintings, carvings, sculpture, artefacts and textiles from the University’s Aboriginal Art Collection.
Aboriginal art is diverse and dynamic. Its unifying characteristic is the land – its spiritual significance and the artist’s relationship to it. All the works in the exhibition are linked to the importance of the land through their subject matter or materials from which they were made.
In 1998 and 1999 Listen to the Land toured to five galleries in Western Australia. With Visions funding the exhibition has now been seen in Adelaide (Tandanya), Horsham, Sale, Mildura and La Trobe University Melbourne. In 2002 it will tour to Ipswich (Global Arts Link), Grafton, Queensland College for the Arts Brisbane (Griffith University) Townsville and Cairns. In 2003 it will be shown at Gladstone and Port Macquarie.
The exhibition has a strong educational component, with a video display, interactive CD-Rom of Aboriginal Art (Moorditj), educational worksheets for primary and secondary school students and a free informative brochure for visitors.
Listen to the Land is presented by Curatorial Services and Kurongkurl Katitjin, School of Indigenous Australian Studies, Edith Cowan University.
Exhibition Curator: Annette Davis
Animalistic
An Exhibition going Ballistic over Animals
Feathers, fur, fish and fowl! Figments of fantasy! Fellow foragers and friends on Planet Earth. ANIMALISTIC consists of about fifty works selected from the Edith Cowan University Art Collection.
Elspeth Averill b. 1972 Drogs 1997The images are predominantly of animals found in Australia, but not necessarily indigenous to it. They include the crow, rabbits, the thylacine, swamp hens, a fly, horses, cattle and frogs. Following in the tradition of the University’s recent touring shows About Face and Listen to the Land, the exhibition is organized around a theme of broad relevance: the importance of animals in all aspects of human life. The exhibition’s acknowledgement and celebration of this subject is conveyed by its name.
Within the larger frame, the works are presented in four thematic categories: Animals as friends and companions; animals in myth, magic and imagination; animals as a resource to be used by human beings, and a group of works which comment provocatively on animals on earth over time, exploring issues such as conservation and ecology.
The exhibition has a deliberately Australian bias. There are works by Australian artists of international repute, such as Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and John Olsen, a generous representation of Aboriginal work and many pieces by West Australians. In the same spirit, there is eclecticism in both media and style. Acrylic sits alongside oil, charcoal, pencil, photomontage, watercolour and digital imagery. Realism brushes against abstract, cartooning against the naïve.
Younger audiences are particularly targeted, with educational packs for both secondary and primary students. It is expected that the individual galleries will arrange attractions to complement the exhibition. Watch out for animal-mask workshops, pet performances and parades, animalistic musical accompaniment (perhaps The Purple People-Eater and How Much Is That Doggy In the Window? Or for the more cerebral, The Flight of the Bumblebee and The Carnival of the Animals) and various other surprises.
The exhibition opens in Fremantle in May 2003 and will tour regional galleries (Geraldton, Bunbury, Katanning, Ballidu, Kalgoorlie, Mandurah) until mid-2005, further enhancing ECU’s already excellent reputation for promoting art, art education and art audience development.