Artist Index

11.10.15

ROSE ANN MCGREEVY 1945 - 2014 opens Friday 23 Otober 6-8pm

Curator: Barbara Halnan
Exhibition Coordinator: India Zegan

ROOMSHEET

Opening night Friday 23 October 6-8pm 
Opening remarks by Mikala Dwyer and Steve Sinn
Open Friday - Sunday 11am - 5pm 24 October - 9 November

ROSE ANN McGREEVY 1945-2014, celebrates the life and work of the Irish-Australian experimental artist, Rose Ann McGreevy, and will include works and documentation not seen publicly before.  These include Inside-out Sculpture, planned by Rose in the year prior to her untimely death: 


Inside-out Sculpture

Inspiration taken from Pompidou Centre, Art Gallery in Paris, France whose ‘working’ bits are mostly on the outside - not hidden - a transparent architecture. How something is made is fascinating to me and to have that articulation seen is paramount to this sculpture. Inside will be white, sheer and clean lines and the exterior will have all the marks and mechanisms of its construction. The inside will bring to mind the unmitigated perfect white walls of a gallery. It will be tall enough so that the viewer will have to peek in and therefore be made aware that they are looking into the sculpture as opposed to looking at it - a transparent sculpture which cannot be seen through but looked into as one might a crevice and yet like all sculpture it will envelope, employ, contain and define space. Rose Ann McGreevy 2014


Rose Ann McGreevy Drawing for Inside-Out Sculpture 2014


In the last year of Rose's life some friends and colleagues approached her suggesting a  one-person exhibition at Articulate project space. With this in mind Articulate applied to Leichhardt Council for seed funding. Rose made drawings conceptualising new works for this exhibition, which was scheduled for March 2015 in the gallery at Articulate. From mid-2014 her health declined rapidly, and she died in October after a long and difficult battle with cancer.

It was decided to proceed with plans for this exhibition, but to postpone it until October 2015. The major work, Inside-Out Sculpture, will be constructed in the project space by a team of workers reflecting  her concept as closely as possible. As I have worked with Rose over many years making work ranging from installations to sculptural works, it has been my pleasure and responsibility to orchestrate the presentation of this work, with the help and support of others.


The man who rolled a stone up a hill
 A second new work The man who rolled a stone up a hill was constructed in the spirit of Rose's writings. Thanks to Paul Cooper for making this work possible.

Using technology ... the boots travel a prescribed distance from the wall and then contract backwards to their original position - continuous motion, but so slowly that at first one doesn't realise the 'boots' are moving. We seem to want machines to like us - our relation to machines has always been complicated - from the Luddites to the Japanese robot makers who are getting close to making the robot in our image.  This work questions the conundrum of desire, activity and beauty. R.A. McGreevy





Other parts of the exhibition include some of her notebooks, a slide show of drawings to give an indication of the power and energy of her mark-making, and maquettes and re-creations of earlier work. A catalogue is also being produced to accompany the exhibition.

Barbara Halnan
August 2015 

The exhibition also includes a 2005 interview with Rose from Artist Archive by Anne Kay and Jane Polkinghorne, and unpublished interviews with Rose by Pam Aitken for the Factory 49 archive. 

Rose's most recent previous work at Articulate project space is Interrupting the Spatial Plane 2014:
Rose Ann McGreevy Interrupting the Spatial Plane 2014 (centre)  Photo Fiona Kemp


http://roseannmcgreevy.blogspot.com.au/

This project is supported by funding from Leichhardt Council