Chaos & Order: 120 Years of Collecting at RMIT Gallery
RMIT Gallery – Melbourne
April 13th, 2018 to June 9th, 2018
Curated by Jon Buckingham
Drawn from the University Art Collection, Chaos & Order is an ambitious survey of artwork collected by RMIT over the last century. A riot of painting, sculpture, photography, sound and new media, the exhibition will embrace the contradictions inherent in public art collections and will explore the uses to which they are put. Public collections can be paradoxical beasts. They strive to adhere to strict criteria (chronology, style or taxonomy; art history, theory and criticism) or be encyclopaedic in their holdings, but are as frequently defined by what they have failed to acquire. Just as often, the curiosities, outsiders and novelties that fall outside the stated ambit of a collection prove to be its great successes: serendipity uncovers many hidden treasures. Chaos underlies the myth of order.
Artists include:Polixeni Papapetrou, Howard Arkley, Peter Booth, Polly Borland, Godwin Bradbeer, Rupert Bunny, Penny Byrne, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Michael Cook, Daniel Crooks, Craig Easton Peter Ellis, Craig Emmerson, Juan Ford, Hayden Fowler, Len French Sally Gabori, Bill Henson,, Robert Hunter, Robert Jacks, Sam Jinks, Roger Kemp, Inge King, Juz Kitson, , Helen Maudsley, Nick Mourtzakis, Trevor Nickolls, Jill Orr, Susan Philipsz, Anthony Pryor, Reko Rennie, , Jan Senbergs, Christian Thompson, Ah Xian.