Nite Art A Cultural Connection
Nite Art 2015 was a spectacular success and The World Loves Melbourne enjoyed an amazing cultural evening starting with the launch at Karen Woodbury Gallery. Art lovers were able to visit the city’s galleries, artist run initiatives, museums and unexpected architectural spaces amid the night-time buzz that Melbourne is famous for. There was also the thrill of wandering through yet to be discovered pathways with art, light, sound and technology as your guide. Or curate your own night, connecting with art, artists and the city.
Nite Art has evolved, now featuring 30 art spaces across three precincts showcasing the work of more than 75 artists.
This year Nite Art was proud to present a series of exciting curatorial projects in association with major partner The University of Melbourne and Open House Melbourne. This included the opportunity to explore the work of Patrick Pound at the Grainger Museum; Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and Martina Copley in association with Liquid Architecture at the Melbourne School of Design; and Paper Giant at the Russell Place Substation.
Nite Art welcomed back ACMI Mediatheque with Peter Callas’ exhibition Initialising History and The Arts Centre – Hamer Hall also joined this year with the premier of Fly By Night by Melinda Hetzel and Co.
Art lovers were able to gain special access to the Japanese Room at Melbourne School of Design, Russell Place Substation, the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology, and Total House (AKA TV House).
Nite Art 2015 put the spotlight on the many and varied exhibition spaces in Flinders Lane and beyond and The World Loves Melbourne imbibed the cultural connection. Eight venues in this iconic Melbourne street opened up late for NiteArt, showing works from over a dozen artists across photography, video, paintings and site-responsive installations.
“Join friends, art lovers and night seekers for unprecedented access to the fabulous art and artists that make our city, under the cover of darkness,” said Nite Art founder Deborah Stahle. With many people to thank, including sponsors and partners, this was a great team effort. The World Loves Melbourne spoke with Fiona Brook from Publicity Partner Zilla and Brook, who were delighted to be part of this iconic event. The food and wine was flowing at the launch in a celebration of the best in Melbourne arts.
We also heard from Deputy Lord Mayor Susan Riley, with City of Melbourne working with art institutions as the event major partner to break new ground at Nite Art 2015.
The eponymous Flinders Lane Gallery invited visitors to experience firsthand the creation of works, with artists Jon Eiseman and Josh Robbins displaying new pieces in the gallery space, and Melinda Schawel at hand to guide audiences in creating their own layered, paper-based artwork.
At Karen Woodbury Gallery, prominent Australian artistPhilip Wolfhagen presented Other Worlds, a new collection of landscape works that are inspired by the artist’s experiences in Tasmania’s Skullbones Plains.
Video artworks lit up the night at Blindside ARI and the Chin Chin Wall of Art. Curated by Xanthe Dobbie and Anabelle Lacroix, Blindside’s Screen Series focuses on the potential of the object in works by five artists and collectives, while Taiwanese-born artist Roy Chu’s installation at Chin Chin explores notions of identity, family and nationality.
The Nicholas Building, on the corner of Flinders Lane and Swanston Street, is home to Blindside ARI as well as CAVES gallery and Stephen McLaughlan gallery. Eliza Hutchison’s photographic installation at CAVES, The Red and the White, explores the morally transient idea of sentimentality in a fluid and expansive archive of ‘pinkness’, while painter Massimo Palombo’s Pictures for a Changing World is inspired by Palombo’s interest in the relationship between the artist and the viewer.
Eliza Hutchison also exhibited at Murray White Room, with Family Photos – a series of photographs produced following her 2014 residency at the Cite des Internationals, Paris. Artist Alisdair McLuckie has created a new, site-specific body of work for Chapter House Lane, entitled House of Joy/Hello Ladies, made up of sculptural objects, collages and a decorative floor piece.
Now in its third year, Nite Art continues to create a new conversation about Melbourne’s cultural identity via collaboration, connectivity and legacy.
Melbourne galleries and unique architectural spaces opened up late for an artwalk event, inviting audiences to 'curate your own night' and connect with art, artists and the city at night. Flinders Lane Gallery provided musical accompaniment to their stunning exhibition, as well as coffee and Tim Tim stacks.
Nite Art also featured a spectacular installation at The Percy Grainger Museum. Leading artist Patrick Pound explored the vast holdings of the Grainger Museum and activated the collection with a poetic responsive intervention that rethinks Percy Grainger and the way he is intimately portrayed through his extraordinary things.
"The Grainger Museum is a marvellous piece of eccentric musical biography. I am interested in how the museum tells stories through its collections of things. I am going to add some of my collected things to those of the museum and put to the test how musical sound might be held and expressed through otherwise 'silent' things. I am wanting to unpack the way things hold and express ideas as if on a dare. " Patrick Pound.
Patrick Pound's work is about compiling and constructing evidence, and making sense of things as he continues to explore the human impulse to categorise, order and curate. His archives, amassed across years of obsessive and meticulous searching and scavenging, include newspaper cuttings, found photographs and everyday objects. These collections take ordinary moments, and through multiplying them and presenting them alongside each other, Pound transforms them into something altogether more mysterious and meaningful. Recent solo exhibitions include Small world, Stills Gallery Sydney, 2015; and The Museum of Holes, Castlemaine Art Gallery and Museum, Victoria, 2015.