Opens tomorrow, 8 June to 1 August 2004
The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square
$2 admission at NGV (no concessions)
www.ngv.vic.gov.au/2004

 
 8 June to 12 September 2004
Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Online exhibition at: www.acmi.net.au/2004/

The latest in
Australian visual culture

For more than two years, a team of curators has sought out artists, new media workers and writers to map emerging trends in contemporary Australian art, cinema, video and digital media. The team found artists and writers talking about collaboration, community, obsolescence, waste and justice.

The result is a partnership between two Victorian cultural institutions, with an incredible 150 art works in the NGV exhibition alone.

Never before have so many works from such varied media come together in one exhibition in Australia.  2004  represents one of the most ambitious surveys of contemporary Australian art and culture in recent history.  2004  includes a substantial proportion of art and new media made outside Sydney and Melbourne with artists coming from every state and territory in Australia.  2004  is a major collaborative project between the NGV and ACMI, conceived to explore the breadth and diversity of visual culture as it is now being practised in Australia.

 2004  - unbounded by media or thematic parameters - shows how artists, crafts workers, game-designers, networked media creators, architects and moving image makers are confronting rapid change in new and old media. It draws individual artists into creative dialogue with each other, with the public, and with our culture.

" 2004  is a provocative and surprising exhibition that will stimulate debate and discussion within the community about the changing nature of visual culture in Australia today. With a cross-generational selection of artists from all over Australia, the inclusion in  2004  of works across all art forms and media is unparalleled in any exhibition in this country. The audience will be inspired, intrigued, challenged and amazed by the diversity and brilliance of Australia's visual artists."
Frances Lindsay, Deputy Director (Australian Art) National Gallery of Victoria

For a list of artists exhibiting at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, visit the NGV's  2004  website.

Seven components over three venues

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia

www.ngv.vic.gov.au/2004

 2004  occupies the entire Level three of The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, located at Federation Square, and presents 46 artists from every state and territory in the nation. Together their works span a wide range of media: painting, sculpture, video, printmaking, craft, fashion, photography; with a particular focus on painting's new role as a reference point for other media, and a specific acknowledgement of the continual innovations by Indigenous artists. The NGV features the work of senior practitioners, such as indigenous artist, Paddy Bedford, well-known Victorian artist, John Wolseley, and mid career artists such as photographer Rosemary Laing.

Online exhibition

The online exhibition, along with online forums, can be accessed at www.acmi.net.au/2004. Just as we connect up online to live, work and play in distributed communities, networked art has evolved in multiple virtual/physical locations - software art, Flash animations, games, generative poetry, immersive worlds and blogs.

ACMI

Screen Gallery, Public Imaging screens, ARTV, Cinema Program, Screen Lounges

Featuring large scale and intimate interactive installations, a cinema program and a free program of silent images, ACMI features a new generation of artists working with wireless, interactive and online technologies are shown online, in ACMI's screen gallery and at live events, as well as airing on SBS. In the ACMI Screen Lounge Exhibition, specially commissioned work for Neighbours (The Remix) offers an alternative to the often unrealistic Australian cultural identity that is presented by Neighbours and other offerings from commercial television.

Artist profile: Paddy Bedford

I always paint my mother's country and my father's country. I don't paint other people's country. The emu is one of my dreamings. That emu place is a dangerous dreaming place, which people should not touch. When we die, the country speaks, the emu cries from up on top. She cries for people belonging to the country and the other dangerous place on Texas Downs answers. The two mountains call out to each other. Maybe when I die the dreaming will cry for me.
Paddy Bedford, quoted in T. Oliver, M. Langton & F. Kofod (eds), Blood on the Spinifex, The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2002.

Paddy Bedford was born around 1920 at Bedford Downs Station in the East Kimberley. After working extensively as a stockman and a road worker, Bedford moved to Warmun in the mid 1970s. He began painting on canvas for exhibition after Freddie Timms established the Jirrawun Aboriginal Art Group at Rugun (Crocodile Hole) in 1997 and since then has participated in many solo and group exhibitions across Australia.

Artist profile: Nick Mangan

In the crux of matter developed from my interest in the chassis of a motorbike as an everyday object. By drawing on its formal sensibilities and abstracting its everyday function, stripping it bare of all practical uses, I look to expose its materiality and pure form. It becomes a hybrid object that talks about the death of technology - a redundant form lying down to rot, a corpse left to decompose. The crystal shards, hand-tooled from acrylic, speak of regrowth and regeneration, not in the sense of being connected with nature, but rather within the language of fictional science. The material and processes reference an interest in geology, organic formations, mutations and transformations.
Nick Mangan

Nick Mangan was born in 1979 and lives and works in Melbourne. Mangan's recent sculptural works have explored the potential of industrially designed utilitarian objects, or forms drawn directly from nature, to embody the processes of economics and cultural values associated with production, consumption, and preservation. Mangan graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts with a BFA in 2000. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions since 1999. Between 2002 and 2004 he undertook a residency at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne. Nick Mangan is represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne.

Artist profile: Harriet Parsons

Harriet Parsons' sculptures are improvised constructions of domestic and commercial litter, needlelace and electronics. In the installation space they are linked together by painting and drawing to map out an imaginary landscape based on recurring dreams and accompanied by noise produced by primitive and obsolete radio technologies. Each landscape is formed by the topography of its electronic components: resistors, capacitors, lights and speakers, woven among the needlelace motifs. Call signs is a continuing project, each exhibition expanding the imaginary landscape.

Harriet Parsons' was born in 1963 and lives and works in Melbourne.   Her current art practice was developed through a mentorship funded in 2001 by the Australia Council with the lace artist and researcher Rosemary Shepherd and composer Jon Drummond. Since graduating from the Sydney College of the Arts in 1997 she has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. The first Call signs installation was exhibited at Gertrude Contemporary Arts Spaces in 2001during her two-year studio residency. The ongoing project has been exhibited in subsequent manifestations at numerous venues around Melbourne including First Floor, 2002; Project Space, RMIT; and West Space in 2003.

Taking part in  2004 

The  2004  exhibition and the extensive program of events, performances and screenings will take place across the two sites at Federation Square, NGV & ACMI, and will showcase the work of the artists or collectives. Visit the NGV website for the latest news about  2004  events, artist performances and more.

Artist Performances

The dynamic artist performances are kicked off with the witty fixation with trash celebrity gossip by Sue Dodd.

Friday 11 June 6.30pm & Sunday 13 June 2pm & 4pm
Sue Dodd, The GOSSIPOP Diet 2004
Performance and video installation.

Curator Talks

Join NGV Curators Anonda Bell, Kelly Gellatly, Dr Charles Green and Jason Smith and discuss the exhibition
$2 admission fee applies.

Symposium -  2004  Australian Culture Now

Sunday 18 July 12noon - 4pm
A major component of  2004  will be  a lively symposium to be held at NGV Australia.  A range of engaging and provocative critics, writers, curators and artists will discuss prevailing issues in contemporary visual culture, encouraging a 'gloves off' approach, candid arguments and passionate debate about the state of art in Australia today. Speakers will be drawn from art spaces, universities and influential art publications from around Australia. The symposium is supported by the John McCaughey Memorial Prize Trust, and will have a special focus on the relationship of contemporary painting to other practices that are increasingly interdisciplinary.

For further information and bookings telephone 8662 1555.

The  2004  catalogue

This substantial full-colour catalogue contains 200 pages of art and essays from Australian curators, artists and academics. Essays include Judith Ryan's Spirit, resonance and innovation Indigenous art 2002-04, Kelly Gellatly's Fast-forward painting and Isobel Crombie's Extreme makeover: The 21st-century body.

A vital and significant publication, the catalogue also includes introductions to the exhibition, artist biographies and statements, and an exhibition checklist. Available from the NGV Shop and at the exhibition.

We want you on a Friday night

Come along to  2004  on Friday nights as part of the regular Art After Dark at Fed Square late night viewings, open until 9pm.

Enjoy live music, free artist talks and two glasses of wine for the price of one.

Art After Dark Music:

Friday June 11, 7pm Casio Nova

Friday June 18, 7pm The Emergency & DJ Gordy

Friday June 25, 7pm Casio Nova

Friday July 2, 7pm Ai Yamamoto & Denki Jam

Support the NGV and have exclusive privileges

Become an NGV Member and enjoy a wide range of discounts and exclusive privileges offered through our two magnificent galleries.

 2004  is a collaboration between the National Gallery of Victoria and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

Principal Sponsor

Exhibition Partner

Support Sponsors

This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

2004 / Art of Zen / City of Light / From Paris with Love / House Mix / Pins & Needles / re_generation

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