SLOPES Gallery to Hit Smith Street

Former Collingwood and now city-based gallery Utopian Slumps is renowned for its curatorial practice, fostering collaboration with noteworthy local and international artists and guest curators. Set to build on this tradition, their brand new gallery space SLOPES is holding a Pozible campaign to help raise operating costs and hold one mighty fine opening night.  

 A non-profit, curator-run contemporary art space, SLOPES presents the work of Australian artists and curators alongside the work of international artists – creating cross-cultural conversations through contemporary art.

An initiative of Utopian Slumps director Melissa Loughnan, SLOPES opens in Summer 2013 and will run for twelve months. The new gallery continues Utopian Slumps original mandate: to educate the Australian public on new and cutting edge artists and art forms and to redress an imbalance in the visibility of Australian art in the global arena.

Directed and curated by Utopian Slumps curator Brooke Babington along with Loughnan and curatorial advisor Helen Hughes, the programming at SLOPES will comprise of a series of group shows, each running for a duration of four weeks until the end of 2014.

Opening exhibition The Knock-off Show is curated by Brooke Babington and Liang Luscombe. The exhibition features Australian artists including Mitch Cairns, Jon Campbell, Lou Hubbard, Diena Georgetti, Kez Hughes, Masato Takasaka, John Meade and Geoff Newton, along with Ella Sutherland from New Zealand and Italy’s Gabriele de Santis. Following a break in January, a show featuring artists Marlie Mul, Virginia Overell and Hannah Lees opens in February 2014.

Kez Hughes, Peter Atkins, Painting and Drawing, Greenaway Art Gallery, 2013

The Knock-off Show investigates the various ways in which artists knock-off, rip-off, draw from or are otherwise inspired by the work of other artists – offering a counterpoint to ideas of innovation within the arts. The artists have been given an open invitation to rip-off another artist or style; to reinvent, imitate, appropriate, homage or simply copy other people’s work.

Located in a former garage space at Nine Smith Street, Fitzroy, the SLOPES space has been provided by Neometro (publisher of Open Journal) as part of the company’s endeavours to reactivate and utilise the dormant site during the lengthy design and planning phase. Along with SLOPES, urban garden initiative 3000Acres will be creating fertile vegetable gardens at the outdoor area at the rear of the gallery space.

Check out and support SLOPES on Pozible – the campaign culminates at midnight on November 28th.

SLOPES
Wednesday to Saturday, 12pm – 5pm, from November
Nine Smith Street, Collingwood 3066
www.slopesprojects.org

John Meade, Screw Babs, 2010. Image courtesy the artist and Sutton gallery, Melbourne

 By Matt Hurst