Living Sculpture

source: gertrudeorgau

Born 1980, Sydney, New South Wales; lives and works in Melbourne. Agatha Gothe-Snape has had recent solo exhibitions at the Festival of Independents, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2012; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2013; The Physics Room, Christchurch, 2013; and Shepparton Art Museum, 2013. Group exhibitions include Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2010; NEW10, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2010; Power to the People: Contemporary Conceptualism and the Object in Art, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2011; Contemporary Australia: Women, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2012; and IT HOLDS UP, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2013.

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source: ngvvicgovau

Agatha Gothe-Snape’s conceptual practice relates closely to improvisational performance. Its often ephemeral material basis tracks our relationships to each other, to art and art contexts and histories. It takes many forms – pedestrian performances, endlessly looped PowerPoint slide shows, workshops, digital collages diagrams, visual scores and collaboratively produced art objects whose production is implicated within a performance the limits of which are ambiguous and up for negotiation.

Often employing conversations, directions, choreographies or instructions, she works with other artists, dancers, actors and audiences to create critical responses to institutional, social, and historical contexts. The resulting artwork could be anything from a dance through a gallery, an invisible play that brings to light the way we operate in gallery contexts, a large instructional text/wall work, or a collective remembrance of art history.
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source: thecommercialgallery

Agatha Gothe-Snape’s conceptual practice stems from improvisational performance. It draws upon and records interpersonal and spatio-emotional exchanges around art and art contexts. It takes many forms: prosaic performances (including dance), looped PowerPoint slide shows, workshops, texts (including correspondence, found texts as well as texts of a poetic character), visual scores and collaboratively produced art objects. Its material manifestation often involves paper. It is marked by a minimal idealisation of colour and language and a frontal visual tactility. It results from agency being given to impulsive responses. Her process is without fixed limits and fosters transparency. The work inhabits spaces that are both physical and non-physical. It occupies thresholds that are negotiable. It flirts with several things at once.

At the invitation of Juan A. Gaitán, curator of the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Agatha Gothe-Snape has produced a procedural work, Untitled, 2014. The site of the work is the splash page of the website www.berlinbiennale.de. The work takes the form of eighty specific word combinations that have been developed by the artist in the months leading up to the May 2014 Biennale and appear randomly, one at a time, with each visit to the website or by refreshing the screen (command + R). They are still in process.

The sources of the words for the Berlin Biennale work are mostly found texts – spoken and written. After a period of consideration, Gothe-Snape emails the word combinations to the curator who forwards them to the London-based designers, Zak Group. In the hands of Zak Group, Gothe-Snape’s phrases are absorbed into the corporate identity of the 8th Berlin Biennale and placed between parentheses (formed by the bisected glyph of the number 8 of this Biennale’s vintage), in a space left intentionally blank. As well as occupying the entry point to the Biennale’s website, Gothe-Snape’s word combinations will migrate and find themselves inserted on posters, banners and other ephemera surrounding the Biennale.. Her role is not dissimilar to a copywriter though the texts are far from copywriting.

Agatha Gothe-Snape (b. 1980, Sydney) has exhibited in major institutional exhibitions in Australia and has created a major new procedural work for the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. Public exhibitions in Australia include Trace: Performance and its Documents, curated by Bree Richards, at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2014); Melbourne Now at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Reinventing the Wheel: The Readymade Century, curated by Max Delany with Charlotte Day, Francis E. Parker and Patrice Sharkey at Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; Octopus 13, curated by Glenn Barkley, at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne (all 2013); Contemporary Australia: Women, curated by Julie Ewington et al at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; MCA Collection Volume 1, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (both 2012); Power to the People, Contemporary Conceptualism and the Object in Art, curated by Hannah Matthews at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2011); Primavera, curated by Katie Dyer at the Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney and New 010, curated by Hannah Matthews at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (both 2010).

In 2013, she exhibited a two-channel video installation and dance score (collaboration with choreographer, Brooke Stamp), Inexhaustible Present, in a two-person exhibition, Taking form, with New Zealand artist, Sriwhana Spong, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Level Two Contemporary Project Space (curated by Anneke Jaspers). She was commissioned by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority to create IT HOLDS UP, a temporal, temporary collaborative work with New Zealand artist, Mike Hewson, on the facade of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia; She exhibited in INexactly THIS – Kunstvlaai: Festival of Independents in Amsterdam as part of the presentation by (Sydney’s) Society (aka Susan Gibb); She completed a Drawing Wall project at Shepparton Art Museum (curated by Elise Routledge), had a solo exhibition at The Physics Room in Christchurch, New Zealand and a solo exhibition, Late Sculpture, at The Commercial Gallery, Sydney (all 2013).

Gothe-Snape’s work is held in a number of public collections in Australia, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney; the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at the University of Western Australia, Perth; Griffith University Art Collection, Brisbane; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne; the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

Gothe-Snape is actively involved in Wrong Solo, a collaborative performance group that she began in 2006 with fellow Sydney artist, Brian Fuata.

Agatha Gothe-Snape is currently a studio resident at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne. Forthcoming activities include Octopus 14, at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, a major public art commission for Monash University’s Caulfield Campus and her second solo exhibition at The Commercial Gallery planned for the first half of 2015.