Opening on Saturday 18 December 2021, contemporary cultural precinct HOTA, Home of the Arts has announced details of the major new exhibition, Art Mixtape: Yours for Summer.
Australia’s largest public gallery outside a capital city, the new $60.5 million HOTA Gallery opened to the public in May 2021. Spanning six levels and including over 2000m2 of AAA rated, international standard exhibition space, the Gallery is home to the $32 million City Collection, consisting of over 4,400 artworks.
Art Mixtape celebrates the vibrancy and diversity of the collection, alongside new works from leading Australian and New Zealand artists. The inaugural summer exhibition is hand-picked by the Gallery curatorial team and will showcase over 80 works, from large-scale installations and multi-channel video works, to photography, painting and sculpture.
Art Mixtape includes works by Tracey Moffatt, Kathy Temin, Justene Williams, Sam Jinks, Soda Jerk, Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, Reuben Paterson, Daniel McKewen, Sally Gabori, Shaun Gladwell and Vernon Ah Kee.
“Since launching in May, the HOTA Gallery has welcomed more than 100,000 visitors,” said Criena Gehrke, HOTA CEO. “And as Queensland prepares itself for the reopening of the borders, we look forward to welcoming interstate visitors from across the whole of Australia for the first time.
“There will be moments of surprise and delight as well as moments of discovery and escapism. We’re delighted that Chevron One Residences is our exclusive principal partner for Art Mixtape.”
Artworks presented in Art Mixtape: Yours for Summer include:
- Capturing the unique spirit of the Gold Coast in Summer, the exhibition features two ‘salon hangs’ that include photographs of a bygone era by renowned photographers Jeff Carter, David Moore and Max Dupain; contemporary portraits of First Nations surfers by award-winning artist Vernon Ah Kee; to saltwater and freshwater visions by painters Bill Yaxley, Ginger Riley Munduwalawala and Willie Gudabi.
- From the City Collection, HOTA Gallery presents Tracey Moffatt’s ten-part Adventure Series – a retro-infused look at the dramatic, hyper-sexualized world of comics, pulpy TV shows and B-grade movies. Featuring stereotyped characters posed in front of colourful painted sets, the photographic series by one of Australia’s most internationally successful contemporary artists draws on the cliches presented in popular culture.
- Sydney based artist Michael Lindeman’s six panelled painting Cheese surrounded by anxiety-inducing, set rat traps, unites humour with conceptual art. The work is both seemingly dangerous and a silly, one-line site gag. Is the whole thing a little cheesy? Or is it a dig at a sometimes too serious side of contemporary art?
- Running Men – a multi-screen video work by Daniel McKewen questions traditional ideas of heroic masculinity through the portrayal of five famous movie characters running on a mesmerising endless loop. With the background of the movies removed, the iconic male protagonists, including Tom Cruise, Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, appear to be trapped in a void, running from nothing, towards nothing.
- Kathy Temin, famous for her large, monochrome sculptures, presents an imagined wonderland in the epic soft sculpture Mothering Garden. Over 37 different elements consisting of trees, an all-white rainbow and stacked spheres, have been sewn together out of synthetic fur, to form a gigantic, non-functional playground, alluding to the joyful aspects of play in mothering.
- A brand-new acquisition for the city collection, multi-disciplinary artist Justene Williams presents Vulvarine – an oversized statue of Sheela na gig, a medieval female figure whose image is found at church and castle sites around the world. Over the centuries the figure has been seen as many things including a powerful symbol of fertility or protector against evil. Williams’ new golden version, with her repurposed mirror halo, is a talisman for today’s times and a symbol of female empowerment.
- Internationally lauded sculptor Sam Jinks blends ancient mythology with contemporary sculpture in Messenger, inspired by the statue of the goddess Iris from the west pediment of the Parthenon. Originally commissioned by the Hellenic Museum, Jinks’ messenger goddess is found gazing into the reflective waters of the River Styx, the threshold between the world of the mortals and the world of the gods.
- The viral The Was created by New York-based art duo and Australian siblings Soda Jerk to accompany music from The Avalanches’ album Wildflower is a mashup of scenes and characters from over 170 films and TV shows. Mining the popular culture of the past, this 14-minute video work is a psychedelic detour through the neighbourhoods of our collective memory.
“To celebrate our inaugural summer exhibition, we have brought together some of our favourite artworks, showcasing the breadth of the City Collection and highlighting some of the nation’s leading contemporary artists,” said Tracy Cooper-Lavery, Director, Gallery and Visual Arts, HOTA.
“A homage to the days when we made a mixtape or playlist of our favourite songs to share with someone special, Art Mixtape is a gallery full of the things we love – some adventurous and some surprising – and we’re looking forward to sharing this new exhibition with our visitors.”
Art Mixtape: Yours for Summer
HOTA Gallery, 135 Bundall Rd, Surfers Paradise
Exhibition opens 18 December 2021
Free entry
For more information, visit: www.hota.com.au for details.
Image: Ruth Maddison, Mermaid Beach revisited 1978 – 2012 #1 1978-2012 Collection, HOTA Gallery © Image courtesy of the artist