Walking on Water

source: julierrap

Julie Rrap’s involvement with body art and performance in the mid-70s in Australia continued to influence her practice as it expanded into photography, painting, sculpture and video in an on-going project concerned with representations of the body. Between 1986 and 1994 Rrap lived and worked in France and Belgium where she exhibited widely. This opportunity to broaden her horizons grounded her work in a more international context and she exhibited in Belgium, Switzerland, France, Holland, Germany and Italy.

Rrap returned to Australia in 1994. In 1995, she held a survey of her work at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne and in 2007, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney held a major retrospective of Rrap’s work titled Body Double, curated by Victoria Lynn.

In 1989 Rrap was included in the Australian Show, which toured to the Frankfurter Kunstverein and other venues in Germany and Edge to Edge to major museums in Japan. Other significant group exhibitions include Photography is Dead! Long Live Photography, (MCA, Sydney, 1995); Systems End: Contemporary Art in Australia (toured to Japan and Korea, 1996); Body (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1998); Fieldwork: Australian Art 1968 – 2002 (National Gallery of Victoria, 2002); Turbulence: 3rd Auckland Triennial (Auckland, 2008); Biennales of Sydney, 1986, 1988, 1992 and more recently, Revolutions – Forms That Turn, Biennale of Sydney, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, 2008.

Rrap has been short-listed for numerous major prizes including the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award, 2002; the National Sculpture Prize in 2003 at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the prestigious Clemenger Contemporary Art Award at the National Gallery of Victoria, 2009. She won the Hermann’s Art Award for her photograph Overstepping in 2001, the Redlands Westpac Art Prize in 2008 for a mixed media work Stasis Symbol and her video work, 360° Self Portrait won the University of Queensland National Artists’ Self-Portrait Prize, 2009. This work has also been selected by Victoria Lynn for inclusion in The Trickster at the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea, 2010, and more recently the 14th Jakarta Biennale 2011.

Monograph publications include Julie Rrap: Body Double, Victoria Lynn’s book to coincide with the MCA exhibition (co-published by Piper Press and the MCA) and Julie Rrap, also a Piper Press publication, 1998.

Rrap has also been the beneficiary of numerous grants from the VACF, Australia Council including a 2 year Creative Fellowship in 2002.

Julie Rrap’s work is held in every major public collection as well as many corporate and private collections both in Australia and overseas.

Julie Rrap is represented by Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery, Sydney and Arc One Gallery, Melbourne.