JULIE RRAP

The Dust of History Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery 21 October–12 November 2022 Sydney

Press Release

Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery is pleased to present a mixed media installation of new works by seminal Australian artist Julie Rrap. In The Dust of History, three side-by-side video recordings show the artist – shot from above – in the act of rubbing, smudging and smearing charcoal on large sheets of watercolour paper. On the opposing wall hang the by-product of this visceral act, the corporeal drawings, in a silent dialogue with their video counterparts.

So much of the past, both public and personal, have streamed into the making of The Dust of History. Back in 1987, while working in Paris, Rrap made Secret Strategies/Ideal Space__s, a black and white mixed media installation where she poses naked alongside her anamorphic drawings of Louvre classics like Degas and Manet - the sensual odalisque breaks free from the cages of art history, fluid shadows against the soldered carapaces of classical Western poses. This current work is a close cousin of these works, and - wild, bold and positive - shows her back to her best.– George Alexander, 2022

The Dust of History is Julie Rrap’s 14th solo exhibition with Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery.

Julie Rrap has been a major figure in Australian contemporary art for over forty years. Since the mid-1970s, she has worked with photography, painting, sculpture, performance and video in an on-going project concerned with representations of the body. In 1995, a survey of her work was held at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne and in 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia held a major retrospective of her work titled Body Double, curated by Victoria Lynn. In 2020, Rrap’s seminal series Persona and Shadows was shown at the National Gallery of Australia in the group exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now, one of the most comprehensive exhibitions of art by women ever assembled in Australia. Most recently, the 2022 iteration of the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art featured 26 photographic versions of the artist’s face in conjunction with an interactive installation and large-scale projection entitled Write Me (2021).

Rrap has been shortlisted for numerous major prizes including the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award (2002); the National Sculpture Prize at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra (2003); and the prestigious Clemenger Contemporary Art Award at the National Gallery of Victoria (2009). In 2001, she won the Hermann’s Art Award for her digitally altered photograph, Overstepping, in which the artist’s own feet are seen to have grown stiletto heels. In 2008, she won the Redlands Westpac Art Prize for a mixed media work Stasis Symbol and in 2009 her video work 360° Self Portrait won the University of Queensland’s National Artists’ Self-Portrait Prize. This work was also selected by Victoria Lynn for inclusion in The Trickster at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea (2010) and the 14th Jakarta Biennale (2011).

Julie Rrap has been represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery since 1983.