EARLY CAREER CURATOR MENTORSHIP 2019

CURATED EXHIBITION as part of Radiant Pavilion 2019

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Insistent. Gestures.

Kazumi Nagano (JP)
Yong Joo Kim (KR)
Chen Chun Tai (TW)
Cyrus (Wai-Kuen) Tang (HK/AU)
Yu Fang Chi (TW/AU)

Insistent. Gestures. brings together the work of five artists who live, work or were born in Asia to explore personal narratives, diasporic identity and the use of repetition.

The exhibition considers the role of materials, bodily gestures and the intimate experience of making. These artists share related geographical histories and connections that respond to their stories and experience of making. Through repetitive cutting, assembling, sewing, weaving, and layering the simple materials chosen by each artist grow in complexity. The constant movement central to each artist’s process gives rise to the contemplation of time and space, and an introspective understanding of body and mind
 
The repetitive movements – or insistent gestures – of making carry a sense of ritual and intimate recollection that resonates with the artists’ personal histories. Here an insistent, female and labour creating subjectivity is woven into being.

Image: Yong Joo Kim, Studies in Exeru Formation: Isoclinal No. 1, 2018, Velcro®Hook-and-loop fastener, 70 × 60 × 22 cm. Photo: Yong Joo Kim

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​CURATOR MENTOR
KATE RHODES

Kate Rhodes is a maker of exhibitions and other things and is Foundation Curator at RMIT Design Hub; a purpose-built home for design exhibitions, programs and research in Melbourne. Kate has worked on art, craft and design exhibitions, workshops and creative activities both in Australia and internationally. She is the creator of several craft and design audio guide projects including the Audio Design Museum, the Sound of Buildings and Melbourne Unbuilt.

Kate has been creative director of the State of Design Festival and curator of its Design for Everyone program. She has held the position of curator at the Australian Centre for Design, Sydney; Craft Victoria and the National Design Centre in Melbourne and was assistant curator of photography and contemporary art at the National Gallery of Victoria for five years. As editor of architecture and design magazine Artichoke, Kate founded Artichoke Night School – a forum for taking design ideas in print into a live discussion. She has completed a Masters of Art Curatorship at the University of Melbourne and a Masters of Design Research in RMIT’s School of Architecture and Design. ​
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EARLY CAREER CURATOR MENTORSHIP RECIPIENT
YU FANG CHI

Yu Fang Chi is a Taiwan-born jewellery artist and curator, currently works and lives in Melbourne. She introspects the processes of making and the position of female body. Her practice involves repetitive fibre-related techniques which can be connected to traditional domestic art processes.

​Yu-Fang works across different facets of jewellery practice and collaborates with diverse artistic fields. Her research focuses on the development of craft and contemporary jewellery in Asia-Pacific Region. Her recent curatorial project assembles jewellery narratives and gender studies with the potential to bring subjective encounters into wider social assignations.

Yu Fang Chi’s artwork has been exhibited in international institutions and platforms, such as Talente and Schmuck exhibition in Germany, and exhibitions in Belgium, China, France, Japan, Norway, and Estonia. In 2018, she received Diana Morgan Postgraduate Gold & Silversmithing Prize in RMIT, and the Marzee Graduate Prize in the Netherlands.