BLAZE 2008

Sonja Barfoed, Kress Beecher, Rosalind Lemon, Owen Lewis, Fiona Little, Anna Madeleine, Amy Nguyen

Curated by Yolande Norris

6th December 2008 - 31st January 2009 | CCAS Gorman

At any one time, set amongst the cottage gardens, creaky floorboards and palpable history of the Gorman House Arts Centre, Studio Residents of the Canberra Contemporary Art Space are pushing boundaries and forging new histories in artistic practice. This coming together of the very very old and the very very new is not unusual in the arts, yet is rare in the creative landscape of Canberra.

In a young city obsessed with cleanliness, modernity and order it is a rare thing for such buildings to survive at all, let alone be handed over to creative industry. Built in 1924 as a hostel for a new, young workforce, Gorman House is today a creative hub and crux of the Canberran Arts Community. CCAS has claim on three studios within the complex, and each year shares them between a formidable group of emerging talents in the form of the Studio Residents Program.

Image: Anna Madeleine, Idiot Box, 2008, video still