PROJECT 35 - CURATED BY 35 INTERNATIONAL CURATORS AND FEATURING WORK BY 35 ARTISTS

PROJECT 35
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Exhibition Dates: 22 July – 18 August 2011
Exhibition Opening: Friday 22 July, 6-8pm

ARTISTS
Guy Ben-Ner, Yukihiro Taguchi, Dan Halter, Zhou Xiaohu, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, The Propeller Group, Kota Ezawa, Edwin Sanchez, and Robert Cauble, Sammy Baloji, Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, Andrea Büttner, Alexander Apóstol, Daniela Paes Leao, Ranbir Kaleka, Ho Tzu Nyen, and Stephen Sutcliffe, Azorro Group, Yason Banal, Tracey Moffatt, Meris Angioletti, Michael Stevenson, Vyacheslav Akhunov, Beryl Korot, Anja Medved, and Tracey Rose, Ulla Von Brandenburg, Elodie Pong, Chto delat/What is to be done?, Chen Chieh-jen, Manon de Boer, Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, Nestor Krüger, Vartan Avakian, and Tamar Guimarães

Gertrude Contemporary was very pleased to present Project 35. This extraordinary travelling exhibition featured 35 of the world’s most pivotal contemporary video works. Organised by the Independent Curators International (ICI) in New York these works were selected by 35 key curators from countries across the globe including Mami Kataoka (Japan), Raimundas Malasauskas (Lithuania/France) and Hans Ulrich Obrist (Switzerland/UK).

For Project 35, each curator was invited to select one artist’s video that they think is vital for contemporary art audiences. Presented across Gertrude Contemporary’s two gallery spaces in four specially designed video projection spaces, these video works offered a diversity of approaches to video making, reflecting varying techniques, exploring a range of ideas and reflecting an enormous breadth of socio cultural contexts.

Gertrude Contemporary’s Director, Alexie Glass-Kantor was invited to represent Australia as one of the curators of Project 35, and for this exhibition she selected Tracy Moffatt’s  2009 work Other. Of this work Glass-Kantor says, “Other is rich and diverse, providing a funny, robust, and critical riff on the way “the native” has been portrayed in popular cinema.” As a comment on Australia’s position within the broader global art context, Glass-Kantor’s selection mirrors the tongue-in-cheek nature of  Moffatt’s collaged content as she goes on to say, “Other disrupts mild manners by resisting subjugation and not flinching from complexity, often using pre-existing moving images ironically to create an unsettling yet ribald narrative of compromised parts.”

Project 35 recalled the founding initiatives of both Gertrude Contemporary and the ICI. Both institutions began over two decades prior with the intention of exhibiting pioneers across all media including the burgeoning field of video art.  Gertrude Contemporary’s  emphasis on risk and experimentation has seen it feature such key film and video artists throughout the years as Australians - Peter Kennedy, Lyndal Jones and Shaun Gladwell along with international artists such as Young Hae Chang - Heavy Industries, Ming Wong, Joachim Koester and Olaf Breuning. Likewise ICI’s inaugural exhibition was a seminal survey of video art featuring work by Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, and Bill Viola.

This was the Australian premiere of Project 35 and featured pivotal contemporary moving image work works never before shown in Australia.

CURATORS INCLUDE
Mai Abu ElDahab (Egypt/Belgium), Magali Arriola (Mexico), Ruth Auerbach (Venezuela), Zoe Butt (Australia/Vietnam), Yane Calovski (Macedonia), Amy Cheng (Taiwan), Lee Weng Choy (Singapore), Ana Paula Cohen (Brazil), Joselina Cruz (Philippines), Sergio Edelsztein (Argentina/Israel), Charles Esche (UK/Netherlands), Lauri Firstenberg (U.S.), Alexie Glass-Kantor (Australia), Julieta Gonzalez (Venezuela), Anthony Huberman (Switzerland/U.S.), Mami Kataoka (Japan), Lars Bang Larsen (Denmark), Constance Lewallen (U.S.), Lu Jie (China), Raimundas Malasauskas (Lithuania/France), Francesco Manacorda (Italy), Chus Martinez (Spain), Viktor Misiano (Russia), David Moos (Canada), Deeksha Nath (India), Simon Njami (Cameroon/France), Hans Ulrich Obrist (Switzerland/UK), Jack Persekian (Palestine), José Roca (Colombia), Bisi Silva (Nigeria), Franklin Sirmans (U.S.), Kathryn Smith (South Africa), Susan Sollins (U.S.), Mirjam Varadinis (Switzerland), and WHW (Croatia)

Project 35 was produced and circulated by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. The exhibition and tour were made possible, in part, by grants from the Cowles Charitable Trust, Foundation for Contemporary Art, Foundation To-Life, Inc., the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and The Toby Fund; the ICI Board of Trustees; and ICI Benefactors Barbara and John Robinson. Project 35 also benefited from donations made to ICI's Access Fund, created to widen the reach of ICI programs - Burt Aaron, Bobbie Brown and Steven Plofker, Jim Cohan, Phillip Drill, Leslie Fritz, Marilyn and Stephen Greene, Agnes Gund, Ken Kuchin, Gerrit and Sydie Lansing, Jo Carole Lauder, Janelle Reiring, Patterson Sims, Bill and Ruth True, August Uribe, Frank and Margo Walter, Helene Winer, and Virginia and Bagley Wright.

You can download the full program of Disc one, Disc two, Disc three and Disc four.