The 1997 Anne & Gordon Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarships
Artist: JULIE GOUGH
Brown sugar 1995
mixed media
180 x 300 cm
© the artist
Imperial leather 1994
wax, cotton and hardboard
149 x 204 cm
© the artist
The world according to Rolf, verse 4, 1965 1996
plaster, huon fenceposts, wire and text
244 x 520 cm
© the artist
Julie Gough's allegorical assemblages work principally to subvert the historical misrepresentations of Aboriginal peoples - both generic and particular - which have become reified or stereotyped in the popular mind. A worldly and scholarly adventurer whose walkabouts rival Boy's Own, Gough took up art after a near-fatal but inspirational collision with a huge eagle, while riding pillion in outback, north Western Australia.
Her method - enhanced by earlier studies in pre-history and English - is to critically rework the assumed meanings of historical stories and cultural forms, and in the retelling, present these as beguiling deconstructions, visually enriched by a well-judged fondness for found bric-a-brac and kitsch ephemera.
Gough, sensitively attuned by her own cross-cultural credentials, builds her narratives sleuth-like from garnerings of eavesdroppings, absences and peripheral vision, taking care to not trespass, but determined also "to dislodge the evidence no-one thought to remove, or even knew was there".
Ross Wolfe
Director, Samstag Program
from the 1997 Samstag catalogue
Elephant Poo
| JULIE GOUGH Born 1965, Melbourne, Australia |
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| 1997 | Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship MA in Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, University of London Master of Fine Arts (Research), Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia |
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| 1994 | Bachelor of Fine Arts, Honours, Tasmanian School of Art, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia | |
| 1993 | Bachelor of Fine Arts, Curtin University of Technology, Perth | |
| 1986 | Bachelor of Arts, (Prehistory, Anthropology and English Literature), University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia |