In-Conversation: Crisis of the Contemporary 2022

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Join James Gatt and Elizabeth Pulie to discuss the challenges of approaching a definition of art in a post-conceptual context, and the paradoxes inherent in making contemporary art.

The talk will draw on ideas from Pulie's essays since 2014, which tackle the philosophical dilemmas of contemporary art's radical openness to form, and its function as a perceived endpoint of modernism.

James Gatt is an independent curator and writer living and working on Gadigal land. He has worked closely with contemporary artists from Australia and New Zealand on projects and exhibitions since 2015, taking a conceptual approach to identify potentials for alternative models that relate to and shape contemporary art. Gatt's research focuses predominantly on conceptual art practices and histories, social and political implications and strategies for art, and art's facility for generating ideas and potentialities. From 2015 to 2017, Gatt was founding director of Squiggle Space, a hybrid studio and project space dedicated to open-ended enquiry and critical discussion. Prior to this, Gatt worked as an educator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He is currently Associate Director at Sarah Cottier Gallery where he has curated exhibitions including Sculpture Salon (_2018), _Contemporary Recalcitrants (_2019), and most recently _Dialogue 2: On Hessian (2020).

Elizabeth Pulie has exhibited her work since 1989. Until 2002 a sense of art as decoration and commodity informed her decorative painting project, while from 2002 until 2006 she focused on a relational practice. Her work has recently opened to new media such as weaving, collage and embroidery. Recent exhibitions include 'The National: New Australian Art', Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2017); 'Unfinished Business: Perspectives on Art and Feminism', Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2017); 'The Conspiracy of Art by Jean Baudrillard', Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney (2018); 'Bauhaus Now!', Buxton Contemporary, Melbourne (2019); 'On Hessian', Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney (2020); and 'Transplant', SCA Gallery and Knulp, Sydney (2021). Pulie is represented by Sarah Cottier Gallery, Sydney.

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Presented in conjunction with #117 (Survey), Australian artist Elizabeth Pulie's first survey exhibition, mapping 30 years of practice.