Julie Rrap interviewed in Ocular by Jennifer Higgie. In the interview Rrap discusses the evolution of her latest commission - a double cast of her body in bronze - and evaluates its place amongst four decades of feminist practice.
Rrap is the recipient of the 2024 Melbourne Art Foundation Commission. Her work, titled 'SOMOS (Standing On My Own Shoulders)', is a life-sized bronze sculpture that will be unveiled at Melbourne Art Fair next week, before travelling to the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) where it will be included in Rrap's solo show, 'Past Continuous', opening in June 2024, and later to its permanent home in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
JULIE RRAP & JANET LAURENCE Feature in Artists' Artists Podcast
JULIE RRAP & JANET LAURENCE were interviewed by Jennifer Higgie for the National Gallery of Australia's podcast 'Artists’ Artists', a five-part series connecting audiences with works of art from the national collection through the lens of contemporary artists.
The podcast invites audiences to learn more about some of the treasures and lesser-known works in the national collection, as well as gain insight into the personal life experiences and stories of Australian and international artists.
Episode 1: Julie Rrap
Julie Rrap is an Australian artist who was born in 1950 and lives in Warrang/Sydney. She has 15 works in the national collection, including multiple works from her monumental Persona and shadow series 1984. In this episode, she speaks about works of art by Sol Wiener, Sarah Lucas, Tracey Moffatt and Yukultji Napangati.
Episode 4: Janet Laurence
Janet Laurence is an Australian artist who was born in 1947 and lives in Warrang/Sydney. In 2020-21, her work was included in National Gallery exhibition Know My Name: Australian Women Artists 1900 to Now: Part One. Laurence has nine works in the national collection, including the large-scale installation Requiem 2020. In this episode, she speaks about works of art by Eva Hesse, Robert Smithson, Rosalie Gascoigne and Nyapanyapa Yunupingu.
JULIE RRAP in 'Suppose You Are Not' at Arter in Istanbul, Turkey
JULIE RRAP is part of 'Suppose You Are Not' a group exhibition at Arter in Istanbul, Turkey. The exhibition, drawn from the Ömer Koç Collection is curated by Selen Ansen, will be on view at Arter between 19 January–29 December 2024.
Suppose You Are Not, the first private collection exhibition held at Arter, spans a wide and deep territory not only in terms of the artworks and objects it encompasses but also the diverse mediums and themes that these artefacts are concerned with. Titled with inspiration from a line in Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat [Quatrains], the exhibition which brings together over 600 works, functional objects, rarities, furniture, and books produced in different periods explores the relations that emerge through the juxtapositions formed by a collection.
Suppose You Are Not delves into the passionate striving to collect and preserve the traces of humanity, the good and the evil, the ephemeral gestures, states, allusions and movements ranging from the most sublime to the most mundane, from the most permanent to the most ephemeral, which manage to persist by being conveyed from the dead to the living.
PAT BRASSINGTON, JULIE RRAP, HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT on display in 'In the Arms of Unconsciousness: Women, Feminism & the Surreal' at Hazelhurst Arts Centre
In the Arms of Unconsciousness: Women, Feminism & the Surreal features a selection of works including Pat Brassington, Julie Rrap, Honey Long & Prue Stent, among other significant contemporary Australian artists on display at Hazelhurst Arts Centre from 1 July 2023 to 10 September 2023.
Sitting within a renewed global interest in women artists and Surrealism, this ambitious exhibition explores ideas of feminism and the surreal, proposing an intrinsic between the two, particularly in contemporary Australian art practice over the decades.
JULIE RRAP work 'Drawn Out' acquired by the National Gallery of Australia
Drawn out (2022) is one of Julie Rrap’s most recent performative self-portraits, the latest in a performative project that began almost fifty years ago.
The work, which is in effect a life drawing, comprises a video-performance of Rrap – shot from above, naked and holding a stick of Conté crayon – drawing on a large sheet of paper, moving under instruction of an unseen supervisor. Over a 12-minute period, Rrap’s body and the sheet of paper become covered in black marks as artist, body, sheet and drawing merge in a neat riposte to the way the genre of the nude, and life drawing in particular, usually position the artist and the naked subject. Together, the drawing and the video-performance produce a compelling, feminist self-portrait that is at once poetic and full of pathos. Key to the work’s disruptive power is the fact that this is the body of a 72-year-old woman, whose body we have looked at in the process of making art and ageing since the late 1970s.
JULIE RRAP finalist in the 2023 Dobell Drawing Prize
Congratulations to JULIE RRAP, who is a finalist in the Dobell Drawing Prize 2023.
National Art School presents the Dobell prize, which celebrates contemporary drawing.
Rrap’s video work ‘DRAW OUT’ is a brilliant investigation of drawing ‘the nude’:
“The drawing is a kind of haptic expression as a naked Julie Rrap rolls back and forth over paper secured to the floor. Here she marks the parameters of her body in charcoal. She can’t actually see her body as one entity in this process, it is not an object of her gaze. What we see is the writing and erasing of a body in pieces, a fragmented body, a body that wears the erasure of the drawing on its skin.” @annemarsh56, 2022
All finalists will be on show at the NAS Gallery until 10th June 2023.
JULIE RRAP, ‘Drawn Out’, 2022, video, 12 min.
JANET LAURENCE Artist Talk 'Artists on the Ice: Interpreting the Poetics of Antartica'
ARTISTS' TALK
Across an evening of storytelling, performance and conversation, JANET LAURENCE will join a panel of four exceptional artists who have documented the power and beauty of Antarctica.
Moderated by the wonderful JULIE RRAP, in her role as Director of Sydney College of the Arts, this talk at the University of Sydney is not to be missed! Other panellists include Alice Giles AM, Professor Jean McNeil, and Dr Diana Chester.
Thursday, 20 April 2023, 6PM. This is a free event, but registration is essential, and seats are going fast! Register on the @sydney_uni website.
JULIE RRAP features in Harper's Bazaar Australia
"[There] is this invisibility around the ageing female body, and it almost sends the message that a post-reproduction body doesn’t have any purpose.”
Early in 2022, Rrap exhibited her new video series DRAWN OUT at ARC ONE for the first time. This significant body of work halted audiences in their tracks:
“I think it’s the first show I’ve done where people, both male and female, were just completely absorbed by watching these videos,” she says. “It was almost like they were hungry to see this footage of an older woman drawing herself naked.”
Visit ARC ONE Gallery today to see this powerful piece in our Viewing Rooms.
JULIE RRAP 'Hairline Crack' Installed at AGNSW
Julie Rrap, 'Hairline crack', 1992, acrylic glass and hair, Installation dimensions variable.
It is fantastic to see JULIE RRAP'S key work 'Hairline Crack', 1992, installed among the permanent collection display at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Rrap first presented 'Hairline crack' in the 9th Biennale of Sydney. From a distance, the artwork resembles a black line drawn on the wall, evoking, perhaps, the work of Sol LeWitt, Mel Bochner or other artists associated with minimalism. On closer inspection, however, it is quickly discovered that the line is in fact made from an unruly excess of human hair.
The work might be seen to meditate on the tension between the organic and the synthetic or between order and chaos. The perfectly straight, level line reveals itself to be disrupted by something organic and unpredictable; a part of our bodies associated with beauty that is also cut and discarded.
SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY 2022
Welcome to ARC ONE at SYDNEY CONTEMPORARY
From today will be showing a selection of major artworks from some of Australia's most significant contemporary practitioners, including PAT BRASSINGTON, LYNDELL BROWN / CHARLES GREEN, PETER DAVERINGTON, MURRAY FREDERICKS, JANET LAURENCE, HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT, DANI MARTI, JULIE RRAP, IMANTS TILLERS, GUAN WEI, CATHERINE WOO, and JOHN YOUNG. We are also proud to be presenting, for the first time, the work of internationally acclaimed artist DESMOND LAZARO.
Our booth is showcasing brand new artworks, alongside some of the most iconic works from ARC ONE Gallery, in celebration of these artists and their significant contribution to contemporary art in this country.
JULIE RRAP and Director Fran Clark featured in ART COLLECTOR
Artist JULIE RRAP and Director Fran Clark feature in the current issue of Art Collector, talking about the longevity of their friendship and professional relationship.
"Artists need to believe in their own vision of the world and a gallerist needs to be able to come on for the ride, but their input can provide invaluable guidance when the ride gets a bit bumpy." - Julie Rrap
"We share a respect that is underpinned by a great care for each other's way of working. Julie has always supported me with solid counsel." - Director Fran Clark
Artist feature in 'Installation View: Photography Exhibitions in Australia (1848-2020)'
IMAGE: Anne Zahalka, The Cook (Michael Schmidt/architect) from the series Resemblance, 1986, matt Cibachrome paper, unique larger size, 100 x 100cm.
Six of our artists ANNE ZAHALKA, PAT BRASSINGTON, JULIE RRAP, JACKY REDGATE, JUSTINE KHAMARA and JOHN YOUNG feature in Daniel Palmer and Martyn Jolly's publication 'Installation View: Photography Exhibitions in Australia (1848-2020)', published by Perimeter Books and designed by Public Office.
"Installation View offers a significant new account of photography in Australia, told through its most important exhibitions and models of collection and display. By looking at what lies beyond the frame the exhibition speaks not only to pictures, but to the people and places that nurture them."
Find more information about the book here
JOHN McDONALD on JULIE RRAP at the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art
John McDonald published a perceptive review in the Sydney Morning Herald today, writing on Sebastian Goldspink's "pioneering" curation of the current Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at AGSA, which includes a focus on JULIE RRAP. Importantly McDonald pays homage to the late, great artist Hossein Valamanesh and visionary philanthropist Neil Balnaves, who are both dearly missed by friends and colleagues in Australia and abroad.
McDonald concludes with glowing praise of JULIE RRAP's installation, writing,
Julie Rrap, now one of the elders in this group, takes a more direct approach, with a multi-channel video installation called Write Me (2021-22), which features 26 images of her own face, laid out like the letters on a keyboard ... One can only admire Rrap’s bravery in creating so many self-portraits in which she has added years and wrinkles to her own face. It’s simultaneously an embrace and a defiance of the ageing process. In the context of this Biennial, in which the older artists seem to have produced the best, most coherent work, it’s also a testament to the value of experience.
READ MORE here
JULIE RRAP in the spotlight in 'The Exhibitionists', ABC TV
JULIE RRAP in 'The Exhibitionists' on ABC IVIEW now
Did you catch JULIE RRAP’s interview on ABC’s wonderful programme ‘The Exhibitionists’? Four art lovers prowl the National Gallery of Australia after dark, and discover the artist behind the celebrated Know My Name exhibition. Watch now on IVIEW.
New interview with JULIE RRAP
JULIE RRAP recently spoke with Kerrie O’Brien from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald about her photographic series ‘Blow Back’, currently on view at the Centre for Contemporary Photography. This series continues her observations on the representation of women in art and society ——“In advertising, women often have their eyes closed and their mouths slightly open, it’s like this vacant entry point.”
“I always argue that the portrait is always more about the person looking at it than the person being photographed,” Rrap shared in the interview, “When you photograph somebody, it’s like this awkward moment when you have this existential crisis about who you are...while a portrait carries all this weight, it’s just a moment in time. Photography captures a fraction of a second of you but fixes you in time… They could be thinking about what they had for breakfast."
Read the full interview here. ‘Blow Back' is on display Centre for Contemporary Photography as part of the exhibition ‘We, Us, Them: CCP x Belfast Exposed’ until 17 April.
JULIE RRAP at the ADELAIDE BIENNIAL OF AUSTRALIAN ART
JULIE RRAP’s newly commissioned and major installation, Write me, 2021, is currently on display in the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Free/State at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
“For Julie Rrap, technology, albeit still fraught, may ultimately provide us with a space for shared experience and accountability. Write Me (2021) examines the social contract of the public sphere. In a career that has often returned to the body as a site of action and politics, recent times have reduced Rrap to a constrained and warped vision of their familiar face. 26 times over, across a keyboard shaped grid, with its familiar, specific alignments, play out 26 versions of the artists face, each representing a letter of the alphabet.”
— Bradley Vincent, AGSA.
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Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: ‘Free/State’ is on view until 5 June.
Learn more via @agsa.adelaide bio or visit
Art Guide interviews JULIE RRAP
JULIE RRAP, Drawn Out [installation view at ARC ONE], 2022, video, 12 minutes.
Art Guide writer Briony Downes sat down with JULIE RRAP to have a conversation on women’s liberation, feminist representations and the inspiration of her new video work ‘Drawn Out', which was a highlight of her recent solo exhibition at ARC ONE.
“I imagined it as a playful gesture where the traditional nude female life model draws herself. Now, seeing Secret Strategies, Ideal Spaces together with Drawn Out, I think there is a fantastic conversation across time; not only because my body is 35 years older but because it has liberated me from having to perform historical works. Now I am simply drawing for myself. The active quality of the video also animates the stillness of the early photographs.”
READ MORE in Julie Rrap on women’s liberation, performance and being a trickster
JULIE RRAP's 'Blow Back' featured in exhibition ‘We, Us, Them: CCP x Belfast Exposed’
Julie Rrap, ‘Blow Back #16’, 2018, digital print and handground glass, edition of 3 + 1 A/P, 1/3, 52 x 64 cm.
JULIE RRAP will be presenting ‘Blow Back’, in the exhibition ‘We, Us, Them: CCP x Belfast Exposed’ opening this Friday 18 February at the Centre for Contemporary Photography.
These portraits represent a collective performance act that uses breath as an action that is both gentle yet provocative. Operating as a localised form of expression for the community of women artists in Sydney that make up the subjects of the work, the performers open mouths mock the endless images of women posed in this way to suggest their receptivity; like a vessel waiting to be filled.
This exhibition is a CCP x Belfast Exchange collaboration conceived as part of the 2021—22 UK/Australia Season.
For more info: https://ccp.org.au/exhibition/we-us-them/
Five of ARC ONE artists are featured in the newly published 'Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia'
Anne Marsh, ‘Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia’, published on 2 November, 2021, by The Miegunyah Press.
Five of ARC ONE artists – ANNE ZAHALKA, EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS, PAT BRASSINGTON, JULIE RRAP and JACKY REDGATE are featured in the newly published ‘Doing Feminism: Women’s Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia’.
Providing a comprehensive analysis of women’s art movements in Australia from the 1960s onward, this remarkable book by art historian Anne Marsh chronicles the struggles, contestations and achievements of women and feminism in Australian visual arts history. The book also acts as an divergent investigation into how the “doing” of feminism has shaped contemporary art and culture at home and abroad.
“…art and feminism are cyclical; they spiral in and out of time, and it’s interesting to see these younger women, very schooled in theoretical frameworks, turning back to an earlier time, and asking: why aren’t we doing that anymore?” ——Anne Marsh in conversation with Susanna Ling.
JULIE RRAP AWARDED FELLOWSHIP IN NSW GOVERNMENT
Congratulations to Julie Rrap, who is one of five successful fellows in the NSW Government's Fellowship program!
The New Dimensions: NSW Visual Arts (Established) Fellowship will support Julie Rrap with funding to allow her to focus on a self-directed professional development program, and also to undertake an additional project or acquisition commission from the MCA. This marks the third year of a partnership between Create NSW and MCA for the New Dimensions: NSW Visual Arts (Established) Fellowship.
The opportunity for Julie Rrap to develop a new body of work and program of research with the Fellowship is significant. This research and artwork will question how we “look” or “look away” when confronted by certain bodies. This is a very timely project for Rrap and an extension of a meaningful practice centred around challenging and questioning traditional expressions of the female body.
Portrait of Julie Rrap in her studio by Jacquie Manning