Exhibitions: Julie Rrap | James Angus 2022

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• Opening reception: Friday, 21 October from 6-8pm⁠

• Exhibition dates: 21 October - 12 November 2022⁠

The Dust of History

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery is pleased to present a mixed media installation of new works by seminal Australian artist Julie Rrap. In The Dust of History, three side-by-side video recordings show the artist - shot from above - in the act of rubbing, smudging and smearing charcoal on large sheets of watercolour paper. On the opposing wall hang the by-product of this visceral act, the corporeal drawings, in a silent dialogue with their video counterparts.

So much of the past, both public and personal, have streamed into the making of 'The Dust of History'. Back in 1987, while working in Paris, Rrap made 'Secret Strategies/Ideal Spaces', a black and white mixed media installation where she poses naked alongside her anamorphic drawings of Louvre classics like Degas and Manet - the sensual odalisque breaks free from the cages of art history, fluid shadows against the soldered carapaces of classical Western poses. This current work is a close cousin of these works, and - wild, bold and positive - shows her back to her best. - George Alexander, 2022

New Sculpture

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery is delighted to present New Sculpture, an exhibition of recent works by James Angus. Conceived and fabricated over a period of three years, these painted steel sculptures put the legacy of modernist sculpture back into dialogue with engineering, architecture and popular culture in the twenty-first century. Like most of his work, the explicit materiality of each object is key to understanding its meaning. They are part of an ongoing exploration of urban design and building construction that the artist has previously described as 'psychedelic and theoretical'.

'The new sculptures I've been making are all appropriated from a particular branch of geometry that academics would describe as 'triply periodic minimal surfaces.' They are forms that could be conjoined infinitely without any obvious seams. I've selected chunks of these forms and cast them in steel […] as if they were severed from a larger structure with an oxy-acetylene torch'.

'I decided to borrow from popular music for the titles of these new sculptures and put language into play, in a way that I haven't really done before […] They have dual surfaces, painted and unpainted, and are incredibly sculptural, and therefore, very difficult to photograph. I like the way that something that is so material can also be so hard to describe'.