EMERGING WRITERS: 'CRITIQUE: 7 WRITERS FOR 15 ARTWORKS'

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For the last ten years, Gertrude Contemporary has run the Emerging Writers Program, in which emerging arts writers (usually four per year) are mentored by a more established writer, with the intention that at the end of the program they will publish a catalogue essay for a Gertrude Studio Artist, and a review in a local art magazine. This year, six emerging writers were selected to be mentored by art historian Rex Butler, and it was decided that, instead of publishing in local art magazines, they would all write accounts of the works of the sixteen Studio Artists participating in the end-of-year Gertrude Studios 2015 exhibition.

Each writer, along with Rex Butler and Helen Hughes, was asked to write a concise paragraph on six artworks each, along with either an introduction or retrospective reflection on the exhibition as a whole. Altogether, seven writers participated, and their various contributions are grouped anonymously for each artwork. We hope that the results are a testament not only to the vitality of Melbourne’s emerging art scene, but also to the critical discourse surrounding art in this city. The reader will find all kinds of attitudes, allegiances and methodologies here: unsorted, unhierarchised, unselected. But let the reader judge what speaks to them—not only each work of art, but what each of our writers has to say about the art.