WIGGA////

by james hullick

a showing of the Neo Gothic sonic and visual wig–based installations by Melbourne artist, JAMES HULLICK

and including a parasitic work by visual artist JEREMY BAKKER as well as two concerts of contemporary music and sonic art

@ SHIFTED GALLERY

ABOUT WIGGA

Where: Shifted Gallery, Level 1, 15 Albert Street, Richmond, Ph: 3 9421 0884 Web: www.shifted.net.au

When: 15 Oct – 1 Nov, Hours: W-S 11– 5 Opening: 15 Oct 6-8pm

Sonic Performance Dates:     opening night – 7pm Blake Stickland followed by Michael Munson

                                                        5pm Sat 1 Nov – Natasha Anderson/Belinda Woods/The Amplified Elephants $10 entry

Wigga is the second exhibition being presented in JOLT’s Dark Luminance Project series, a series curated by John Derrick and James Hullick. Wigga is following on from the massive success of the August 2008 showing of the Dark Luminance Project in New York [as New York reviewer Joe Bendik writes: “Sometimes I encounter an exhibition that is so overwhelming, covers so much new territory and breaks so much new ground that it’s difficult to write about it”. It’s a hard act to follow, but then JOLT’ always did like a challenge!

Wigga is a showing of the work of James Hullick that combines black wigs, audio speakers, video, installation sculpture in sonically active exhibition setting. Works use the symbol of the black wig as a trigger for an irrational and archetypal experience, that for some punters congers the horrific and for others the darkly beautiful. There is disembodiment in this work, there are spirits and a strange city-style link to our traumatic national past that has been played out against the harsh backdrop of our antipodean landscape, replete with it’s unknowable interior. Visual artist JEREMY BAKKER has been invited to parasitically impose his collections of thousands of wax thumb prints on the Hullick’s installation – an incursion on what would otherwise be a typical solo artist exhibition. Two DARK LUMINANCE Sound Art performances will take place as part of the Wigga showing. These events will include the AMPLIFIED ELEPHANTS, NATASHA ANDERSON, BELINDA WOODS, MICHAEL MUNSON and BLAKE STICKLAND. Footscray’s inter-abilities sound art outfit will be presenting some of their highly celebrated work for this project alongside some of Melbourne’s finest gothically inclined sound artists.

ABOUT THE DARK LUMINANCE PROJECT:

The DARK LUMINANCE Project is the brain-child of curators John Derrick and James Hullick [presented by JOLT and supported by RMIT’s Creative Media and Art schools] and seeks to unravel how Australian artists have taken on Gothic aesthetics and turned them into an Australian sensibility  that exists beyond Gothicism which Derrick and Hullick refer to as DARK LUMINANCE. The first iteration of the Project took place in two Galleries in New York (Gallery Sakiko based in Chelsea NY, and the acclaimed Pratt Institute). It was a runaway success – “totally mind blowing” as one critic remarked. New Yorkers enthusiastically embraced the Australian DARK LUMINANCE being evolved in part from Gothicism – an ideology so close to their own hearts. Australia is a land that was taken from it’s ancestral owners, a land settled as a prison, a land on the other side of the earth. The DARK LUMINANCE Project looks at how we culturally and psychologically process that heritage in the bustle of contemporary life.

IMAGES FROM WIGGA

A panoram of Hullick's installations in Gallery 1 (@ Shifted Gallery)

INCUBATOR (2008) by HULLICK

LEYZ GERLZ (2008) by HULLICK

YOU MAKE ME FEEL SO YOUNG (2008) by JAMES HULLICK: Gallery 2

BOMMA (2008) by HULLICK: Gallery 1

JEREMY BAKKER: THUMB PRINT INCURSIONS: In All Galleries + Foyer

IMAGES FROM WIGGA CONCERT no.2 (Sorry guys - no pics from WIGGA CONCERT no.1!)

THE AMPLIFIED ELEPHANTS: string quartet no.1 and improvisation  rub (with Belinda Woods and Natasha Anderson)

NATASHA ANDERSON

WIGGA REVIEW