I recently received an email from Paul Fletcher who is a Lecturer of Animation in Film and Television at the Victorian College of the Arts. He is seeking contributions for an exhibition he curates yearly called Hidden Creatures. The above film documents a little of this years exhibition at Bendigo and it looks fantastic!
Paul is looking for submissions of images, text, animation or sound to be considered for next year's Hidden Creatures exhibition. It may be possible for your entry to be animated in a an online movie, exhibition screen or projection.
The cut off date for submissions is 15th December 2011. To find out more and submit your work for the Hidden Creatures project follow this link.
Here is a little of what Paul has to say about the exhibition:
"WHAT CREATURE IS THAT ? Is an audiovisual Field Guide to rare and imagined creatures. A collaborative ongoing community collection of writing, pictures, sound and moving image related to acknowledging, caring for, and understanding the creatures of our imagination, rare and endangered creatures specific to our own environments and the creatures that are our ourselves."
I have long been a fan of William Kentridge's work so I couldn't believe it when we received a very exciting press release yesterday from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image telling us that their major exhibition for the start of next year was to be William Kentridge's: Five Themes which will showcase the five key themes that has captivated his work over his career.
For those unfamiliar with William Kentridge's work he is well known for his stop motion animation artworks using his charcoal drawings about the social and political environment of his home country South Africa. To get a small insight into his style of work you can watch the following short film on his processes I found on youtube uploaded by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Here is some more information from ACMI on the exhibition:
From 8 March to 27 May 2012, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) presents William Kentridge: Five Themes, an exhibition by one of the world’s leading contemporary artists, William Kentridge.
Premiering in Australia after travelling to San Francisco, New York, Paris, Vienna, Jerusalem and Moscow, the exhibition explores five key themes that have captivated Kentridge throughout his career.
Well known for his stop motion films of charcoal drawings, Kentridge’s multi-disciplinary approach will be showcased through over 70 works ranging from animations, drawings and prints to theatre models, sculptures and books.
Born in 1955 in South Africa, and continuing to reside in his hometown of Johannesburg, Kentridge is highly regarded for a body of work that reveals strong links to the social and political environment of his home country. Tackling issues of colonial oppression, reconciliation, and the transient nature of individual and shared memory, his work deftly combines the political with the poetic.
“William Kentridge is one of the most significant artists working internationally today and we are thrilled to be presenting his exhibition Five Themes,” says ACMI Director Tony Sweeney. “An expansive and illuminating survey of Kentridge’s work over the past three decades, Five Themes reveals the full arc of his distinguished career and comes to Melbourne after a successful tour to MOMA in New York and the Albertina Museum in Vienna.”
The Five Themes Thick Time: Soho and Felix
The first section of the exhibition features a recurring fictional character in Kentridge’s work, Soho Eckstein, an overbearing businessman with an uneasy conscience and his delicate alter-ego, Felix Teitlebaum. An ongoing work of nine animated shorts, 9 Drawings for Projection traces the lives of these characters during the last decade of apartheid in Johannesburg.
Occasional and Residual Hope: Ubu and the Procession
Inspired by the Alfred Jarry play, Ubu Roi, with its strong themes of corruption and cowardice, Kentridge developed a series of etchings in 1996 called Ubu Tells the Truth. The following year he completed an animated film of the same name along with some drawings. Exploring themes of truth and reconciliation, these works are also a commentary on the human rights abuses that took place during the time of apartheid.
Parcours d'Atelier: Artist in the Studio
The third section of the exhibition explores Kentridge at a crossroads in his career, putting the spotlight on his own art practice to expose the work that takes place prior to a film, drawing or sculptural work being created. A tribute to French film director Georges Méliès, Kentridge’s large-scale multi-screen projection 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès (2003) consists of seven films revealing Kentridge’s own creative process.
Sarastro and the Master's Voice: The Magic Flute
In 2005, Kentridge directed a production of Mozart’sThe Magic Flute for Belgium’s renowned opera house, La Monnaie. Inspiring him to create several films, drawings and theatre models, and a video projection called Learning the Flute (2003), this body of work sees Kentridge explore the contrasting states of darkness and light.
Learning from the Absurd: The Nose
The final section of the exhibition consists of a multichannel projection made in the lead up to Kentridge’s 2010 production of The Nose, for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The companion piece, I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008), is a room-size installation of projected films that examine Russian modernism and the repression experienced by the Russian avant-garde during the 1920s and 1930s.
William Kentridge: Five Themes is organised by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and the Norton Museum of Art. Generous support for the exhibition is provided by the Koret Foundation. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
William Kentridge: Five Themes is exhibited exclusively in Australia in Gallery 1 at ACMI from Thursday 8 March until Sunday 27 May, 2012. Further information about the exhibition will be revealed in late 2011.
Okay - this is a partial review until we make it into the city again as unfortunately we were way to early for the gallery thanks to an early rising toddler. We did however manage too get some picks from the outside to entice you into going to visit the magical world that Cat Rabbit has created.
Sponsered by Frankie and held at No Vacancy Gallery at Federation Square this is Cat Rabbit's first solo exhibition Secret Animal Realms. The exhibition features beautiful handmade creatures, embroideries, accessories, zines and of course what we are very interested in - a stop motion animation!
Cat Rabbit has collaborated with Melbourne animator Isobel Knowles to create a whimsical and fantastic animated world. We don't obvoiusly want to reveal much but it was lovely to see Cat Rabbits creations come to life in this film. The animation is showing at the Atrium at federation square while the exhibition is showing.
Please go check out the exhibition if your in Melbourne it will be on from 20th April to 8th May.
Below are a couple of images we managed to get from the outside.
Very excited to just find out that ACMI is having an exhibition of Adam Elliot's latest stop motion Mary and Max opening Tuesday 2 March and it's free!
They are showing character models, costumes, sketches, sets, storyboards, props and footage of the animators at work.
