BEYOND THE VEIL | Anastasia Booth, Daniel Gawronski, Guy Grabowsky, Josh Hook, Paulina Hupe, Cristal Johnson, Tessy King, Hernan Lopera, Diego Ramirez, Britt Salt, Michele Sierra, Jake Treacy.

Through architectural interventions, site specific responses, public programs, newly commissioned works as well as renewed curatorial vision upon existing works, 12 contemporary artists altogether conjure a liminal experience within BLINDSIDE.

Calling upon all that is unseen, peripheral, veiled and at the threshold of our collective blind sides, Beyond The Veil constructs and chances ambiguous moments often encountered within ceremonial and daily ritual, performing the numinous quality of art. When in a liminal state one is considered in flux – neither her nor there, yet betwixt and between – and so the gallery space becomes a fertile place for transformation.

As one enters BLINDSIDE they are greeted with their mirror self; a ghost sculpture collapses upon itself; a monumental wall becomes a gateway between interior and exterior worlds; punctured vessels carry and seep energy from other times and places; the contemporary figure of the witch demolishes and rebuilds gender hierarchies; a corner of reflective discs perpetually shifts architecture; Jungian archetypes glow, smoke and smoulder; and a live eclipse interrogates colonial forecasts. All the while the internal structure of the gallery becomes a haunting acoustic, where a spirit box channels voices beyond the walls.

On the opening night a performance by Josh Hook and a ritual by Paulina Hupe will take place, piercing and puncturing the veils between worlds.

Josh Hook | The Perfect Wall, as an architectural intervention, demonstrates the ritual of setting up an ideal blank canvas from which to work, the destruction and break down that can occur, and the eventual rebuilding to begin again. Taking a hammer to puncture the wall, Hook actions the conversation between interior and exterior worlds, underscoring the gallery as a perpetual construction site.

Paulina Hupe | RTU is an intimate, ritualistic performance covering the faces of past and future, drawing upon the present. In this work the female body is a vessel of transcendence, an archetypical carrier for potential and transformation where nature’s Magick lives and dies.
Performance may include nudity. The artist kindly requests that no photography or documentation occurs throughout the duration of the performance.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a curator’s floor-talk in the form of a walking-procession across Melbourne.