Good Mourning -

Opening - 12:00 AM - Wednesday, 7th of November

Artist Talk - 6:00 PM

Running - 7 Nov 2012 - 24 Nov 2012

Good Mourning presents work by nine Australian artists exploring death as a physical and psychological consideration. Participating artists include: Elvis Richardson, Nana Ohnesorge, Sarah Contos, Matthew Bradley, Ray Harris, Matt Huppatz, James L Marshall, Riley O'Keeffe, Patrick Rees. Co-curated by Ray Harris and Riley O'Keeffe.

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Matthew Bradley

Matthew Bradley's sculptural and performative works are the result of an experimental and scientific approach to thinking and making. His work intertwines personal and historical mythologies as it moves through an intellectual terrain that reaches from ancient history to future Outer Space exploration. Along the way he grapples with big ideas, like the evolution of consciousness, the origins of the universe, the fatal attraction of the horizon and the faith humans have placed in technological advancement. Recent group exhibitions include: This is what I do, Metro Arts, Brisbane and, CAST,Tasmania, 2012; Nothing like performance, Artspace, Sydney, 2011; Before and After Science: 2010 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, Art Gallery of South Australia; Contemporary Australia: Optimism, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art,Brisbane 2008; World One minute, Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2008 and Uneasy, Anne and Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide 2008. Recent solo exhibitions include: New vehicles and exploration, Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide 2011 and Axle Mace, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, 2010

Sarah Contos

Sarah Contos is a multidisciplinary artist working across installation, sculpture and painting. Her practice is informed by cultural anthropology, fetishism ideology and art history using wry humor and erotic sensibilities to draw relationships between the primitive and everyday. Sarah Contos has exhibited throughout Australia and has participated in artist residency programs in The Netherlands and Australia. In 2011 she was awarded the Marten Bequest Traveling Scholarship for Sculpture and recently granted a New Work grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. Sarah Contos lives and works in Sydney and Perth.

Nana Ohnesorge

German-born Nana Ohnesorge completed a BFA in painting at the National Art School in Sydney 2005 and graduated in 2006 with First Class Honours. During and since her studies, she has won some major art prizes, was selected for the Sulman Prize (AGNSW) four times, and has been a finalist in many other art prizes. She has been a member of artist-run gallery MOP Projects in Sydney since 2006 and has held many solo shows and her work has been included in numerous group shows, many in Regional Galleries and Interstate. She is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery in Adelaide and by Galerie pompom in Sydney.

Elvis Richardson

Elvis Richardson's art practice explores patterns of recognition and memorialization. Her installations present found objects collected en-masse, disconnected signs of personal identity, reactivated through the gallery context to question their own loss and stage their reinvention. Personalized mass produced items such as 35mm slides, YouTube videos, trophies and home-recorded VHS cassettes, carpet as well as interviews become the raw materials to construct new stories of collective recognition and public nostalgia or is it collective nostalgia and public recognition?. Themes of crime, death and transgression are explored through text works that comment on or express personal experiences as an artist. Elvis Richardson's practice also encompasses her engagement with ideas and models of Artist Run Spaces. Elvis has been a director of First Draft Gallery (1996-97, Sydney) she initiated Elastic (2000-03 Sydney) a gallery and a printed project. In 2007 Elvis moved to Melbourne and became part of the collective at Ocular Lab an experimental artists space in West Brunswick. And in 2010 Elvis conceived of and opened a themed curatorial gallery space DEATH BE KIND now managed by herself and Claire Lambe where she has curated many of the exhibitions and designs the website (http://www.deathbekind.com). In 2008 Elvis started CoUNTess a blog that looks at gender representation in the Australian art world. (http://countesses.blogspot.com/)

James Marshall

James L Marshall graduated with a Master of Visual Arts (by research) at the South Australian School of Art Architecture and Design in 2011. Marshall's practice reflects a range of influences including cinema, surrealism, light, the subconscious, death, abjection, and the uncanny. He filters these concerns through reductive processes to ultimately comment on the human condition. Marshall has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions within South Australia, National ARI's, participated in art fairs in Stockholm and Los Angeles and presented his research in Oxford, England at the Fourth Global Conference of Fear, Horror and Terror. Marshall initiated the FILMCLVB program at RAID Projects (LA) / FELTspace and has curated/facilitated various exhibitions focussing on international dialogue. He is currently living in Los Angeles and acting as Assistant Director of Raid Projects.

Patrick Rees

Patrick Rees is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Los Angeles, California and Adelaide, Australia. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in performance and screen studies from Flinders University, South Australia, Rees was involved in the film industry in Sydney as a performer and filmmaker before returningto study visual arts at the College of Fine Arts at the University of NSW. Rees completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours) at the University of South Australia. Rees has exhibited in group exhibitions at Magazine Gallery (SA), Format Gallery(SA), Boxcopy (QLD), Next Wave Festival (VIC), and the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia. In 2012 he became a co-director of FELTspace; has had solo exhibitions at FELTspace, CACSA - Project Space and the Australian ExperimentalArts Foundation - Odradek (SA). In 2012 Rees has also undertaken a 4 month artist residency at RAID Projects, Los Angeles, and has exhibited at the and Co/Lab ArtFair, Los Angeles as part of Art Platform, Los Angeles.

Matthew Huppatz

Matt Huppatz is an Adelaide-based artist working in sculpture, assemblage and photo media. He is currently completing a PhD in Visual Arts in the School of Art, Architecture and Design at UniSA. His research examines queer passages in contemporary and 20th century art practices. Particular interests include sites of masculine expression, the magico-ritual aspects of contemporary art practice and assemblage as a disruptive visual language. Matt has exhibited in group and solo shows including Instinct (Greenaway Art Gallery, Adelaide 2012); Supermarket Art Fair, Stockholm; Dark Light (Inflight, Hobart 2011); Vague Possibilities (SASA Gallery, UniSA 2011); SOFT CORN (FELTspace, Adelaide 2010); Shed Light Works (Project Space, CACSA 2009); FELT UP (Seventh Gallery, Melbourne 2009); and Hatched09 National Graduate Show (Perth Institute of Contemporary Art 2009). In addition to his art practice, Matt is an active advocate of artist-run culture. He was a co-director at FELTspace 2009-2012, and edited the publication FELTspace GOLD: a survey of emerging contemporary art practice in South Australia 2011. He has also taken part in national ARI projects including Structural Integrity, the keynote project of Next Wave Festival 2010, and NAVA's national ARI symposium We are Here, in 2011.

Ray Harris

Ray Harris is not a middle-aged man as her name might suggest but an emerging Adelaide artist working in mixed media sculpture, performance, video and installation. The focus of her work is largely the psychological struggles and complexities of self-concept, focussing on everyday self-delusions, deceptions and fantasies we create, believe and rely on to cope with the complexities of repressed desires, feelings, anxieties and psychological pain accompanied by the facilitation of unawareness. Fascinated by mental spaces, she explores these issues through autobiographical interpretations of universal experiences and conditions in the dual creation of sculptural spaces and perfomative video. Ray is a Masters (Research) candidate at the University of South Australia and recipient of the MF & MH Joyner Scholarship. She was awarded the Constance Gordon-Johnson Sculpture and Installation Prize 2010 (UniSA). Ray has exhibited and been an artist in residence at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation (Solo- Hold me Close and Let me Go 2011), SASA Gallery; Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Hugo Michell Gallery. She also exhibited at Sawtooth (Launceston), Boxcopy ( Brisbane), In Flight (Hobart) Next Wave (Melbourne) Supermarket Art Fair (Sweden) and Gil and Moti Homegallery, (Netherlands) Ray has been a co-director of FELTspace since 2010.

Riley O'Keeffe

Riley O'Keeffe is a an artist/musician/writer/curator based in Adelaide, South Australia. He is currently undertaking a Master's by Research at the SA School of Art, Architecture and Design as well as well as Co-Director of Artist Run Initiative FELTSpace. He has exhibited and performed in various locations around Adelaide Including the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, The Experimental Art Foundation, FELTSpace and Format. In addition to this O'Keeffe has exhibited at Bocxopy in Brisbane and Inflight ARI in Tasmania. His multidisciplinary work focuses on notions of mortality, time and the infinite.