MEDIA KIT
TOO MUCH OF ME:
7 PATHS THROUGH
THE ABSURD, (WITH DETOUR)*
ARTISTS: RONNIE VAN HOUT | KIRSTY HULM | LAITH McGREGOR
STUART RINGHOLT | WORKMANJONES | ERWIN WURM
*(SAMUEL BECKETT AND BUSTER KEATON)
CURATOR: GERALDINE BARLOW
Laith McGregor, Helm of the Rambut Pura 2008
Biro on paper, Collection of the artist.
MEDIA KIT
TOO MUCH OF ME
7 PATHS THROUGHT THE ABSURD, (WITH DETOUR)*
Above: Stuart Ringholt, Wednesday he wore a
plastic nose, performance 2003, courtesy of
the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
and Sydney
Left: Kirsty Hulm, Allegory for a cowboy story
that never came to be 2008, ink on paper (detail),
courtesy of the artist
TOO MUCH OF ME:
7 PATHS THROUGH
THE ABSURD, (WITH DETOUR)*
Exhibition Dates:
Monash University Museum of Art
15 April – 20 June 2009
Monash University Museum of Art
MUMA
Ground Floor, Building 55
Monash University, Clayton Campus
Wellington Road, Clayton
Postal: Monash University VIC 3800
Melbourne, Australia
Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm
Saturday 2-5pm
T: 61 3 9905 4217
E: muma@adm.monash.edu.au
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Free entry
MEDIA KIT
TOO MUCH OF ME:
7 PATHS THROUGH
THE ABSURD, (WITH DETOUR)*
ARTISTS: RONNIE VAN HOUT | KIRSTY HULM
LAITH McGREGOR | STUART RINGHOLT
WORKMANJONES | ERWIN WURM
*(SAMUEL BECKETT AND BUSTER KEATON)
CURATOR: GERALDINE BARLOW
Introduction
… trying to cease and never ceasing, seeking the cause, the cause of talking
and never ceasing, finding the cause, losing it again, finding it again, not
finding it again, seeking no longer, seeking again, finding again, losing again,
finding nothing, finding at last, losing again, talking without ceasing, thirstier
than ever, seeking as usual, losing as usual, blathering away, wondering what
it’s all about, seeking what you can be seeking, exclaiming. Ah, yes, sighing.
No no, crying, Enough, ejaculating, Not yet, talking incessantly, any old thing,
seeking once more, any old thing, existing away, you don’t know what for, as
yes, something to do, no no, nothing to be done, and now enough of that,
unless perhaps, that’s an idea, let’s seek over there …
– Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need
and the unreasonable silence of the world.
– Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
How do we make sense of who we are and our place in the world, a world
ambivalent to our existence? Our thirst for meaning fuels our encounters
with the absurd; whether unexpected or deliberately sought out. Too Much
of Me creates a number of paths through this terrain, encompassing the
philosophical weight of the absurd as well as its relationship to play, creation,
ridicule, revolt and freedom.
Too Much of Me features the work of Ronnie van Hout, Kirsty Hulm,
Laith McGregor, Stuart Ringholt, WorkmanJones and Erwin Wurm, with a
detour from Samuel Beckett and Buster Keaton. The artists in the exhibition
work with aspects of personal refection and self-portraiture. If art and self
awareness arise from self reflection, what are the dangers of an excess of self
reflection – too much of me?
OPENING FUNCTION
Saturday 18 April, 3-5pm
Monash University Museum of Art, Clayton Campus
With opening welcome at 3:45pm
PRE-OPENING FLOOR TALK
Saturday 18 April, 2.30pm
Join curator Geraldine Barlow in conversation with exhibiting artists Ronnie
van Hout, Kirsty Hulm, Patrick Jones (WorkmanJones) and Stuart Ringholt. CATALOGUE
A 64 page colour catalogue will be produced for Too Much of Me
featuring texts by exhibition curator Geraldine Barlow,
Justin Clemens and Jess Johnson
Media Contact
For further information or image requests please contact Danny Lacy, Program Administrator
03 99051618 or danny.lacy@adm.monash.edu.au
Above: Erwin Wurm, Take your most loved philosophers 2002, pencil on paper,
instructional drawing from the One minute sculpture series, and view of the sculpture realised by
the public, courtesy of the artist and Gallery Xavier Hufkens, Brussels,
Belgium and Gallery Thaddeus Ropac, Salzburg, Paris
MEDIA KIT
TOO MUCH OF ME
7 PATHS THROUGHT THE ABSURD, (WITH DETOUR)*
Artists’ Biographies
Kirsty Hulm
Kirsty Hulm works with text,
performance and sculpture. Her
narrative drawings employ allegory,
quotation and a typewriter with a
ribbon and keys. She constructs
elaborate scenarios only to pull
them apart, creates perfect
circles as homes for abstracted
architectures and imagines cloud
studies from liquid paper in shades
of cream upon cream.
With her moleskin notebooks, flesh
coloured modelling compounds,
scrapbooks and matchsticks Hulm
embraces the provisional, the
study and the potential for failure.
Her works move between various
emotional registers: wry, romantic,
pedantic, angry, self aware and
self deprecating. She can make
you laugh with a comma.
Hulm was born in 1985 and lives
and works in Melbourne. She
completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts
(Honours), Monash University, in
2008. For Melbourne's 2008 Next
Wave Festival, Hulm presented
Imagine Me & You, I Do, a twopart installation, on the façade
of St Paul’s Cathedral as well as
in-store at Alphaville, Flinders Lane,
Melbourne. Her work also featured
in Next Wave’s Nightclub Project:
Pure Pleasure and Everybody’s
Free, two one night only events
held at The Men’s Gallery and
Billboard Nightclub.
Hulm’s group exhibitions include
Proposition 4 Proposition,
curated by Angela Bletas at
C3 Contemporary Artspace,
Melbourne, 2008; The Craft
Exchange Salon, curated by the
Safari Team at 25a Eastment St
as part of the 2008 Melbourne
Fringe Festival; an installation
for Penthouse Mouse, a 2008
L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion
Festival initiative curated by Kate
Hannaford; I’m Not Looking
Forward to the Future Very Much:
An Exploration of Pessimism in Art,
curated by Carl Scrase at Runt
Gallery, Monash University, and
Project Fluoro, curated by Emma
Davis at Dante’s, Fitzroy, 2004.
Ronnie van Hout
Ronnie van Hout’s work explores
the self in its many different guises,
as well as the artist’s own personal
history and memories. Van Hout
has created numerous versions of
himself: with wild grey hair holding
a pair of small birds, as a painter/
monkey and a dog/sculptor. We
were offered the opportunity to
step into a room in van Hout’s
memory in Sleepless 2008, a 2/3
replica of the bedroom he shared
with his brother as a child. For Too
Much of Me, this duplication of the
artist is extended in the new work,
Doom and gloom 2009, with a pair
of pyjama-clad van Hout figures,
as well as three small coffined
doppelgangers from the End Doll
series of 2008.
Van Hout was born in 1962 in
Christchurch, New Zealand and
lives and works in Melbourne. He
attended the School of Fine Arts at
Canterbury University between 1980
and 1982, where he majored in
film. In 1999 he received a Masters
of Fine Arts from RMIT University,
Melbourne. Since the mid 1980s,
van Hout has exhibited extensively
in Australasia and beyond. In 2005,
van Hout was awarded Laureate
Artist by the Arts Foundation of New
Zealand.
In 2008, van Hout presented
solo projects Bed/Sit, Artspace,
Sydney, Australia; A Loss, Again,
Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of
New Zealand, Wellington, and
the outdoor sculptural project
R.U.R., at the Melbourne Art Fair,
Melbourne, Australia. Other recent
solo exhibitions include Ersatz,
Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; I’ve
Abandoned Me: a Ronnie van Hout
Survey, initiated by the Dunedin
Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, which
toured to venues in New Zealand
and Australia from 2003-5 and Only
the Only, Art Gallery of New South
Wales, Sydney, 2001.
Ronnie van Hout is represented
by Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney,
Hamish MacKay Gallery, Wellington,
Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland and
Uplands Gallery, Melbourne.
Laith McGregor
Laith McGregor’s works are
exacting and exaggerated. He
draws from photographs and
the familiar, capturing the finest
details of faces which include his
own, his father’s and other family
members. McGregor draws on
expanses of fine rag paper with
cheap disposable biros. A blurry
fuzz of blue biro delicately describes
an engorged and pendulous beard
extending from his father’s chin.
Hair, a great marker of masculine
virility, when found in the ‘right’
places, is an ornament of absurd
puffery in McGregor’s work, as
well as a form of protective veil.
McGregor employs strategies of
caricature, he makes us smile, but
his portraits are more searching in
what they reveal with this excess
of hair.
McGregor has recently returned to
Melbourne after a period living in
Brisbane. He completed a Bachelor
of Fine Art (Honours), Victorian
College of the Arts in 2007. He has
held solo exhibitions at the Institute
of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2008; TCB
Art Inc., Melbourne, 2008; Helen
Gory Galerie, Melbourne 2006 and
forthcoming in 2009; and Alliance
Française, Melbourne 2005.
McGregor’s work features in I Walk
the line: New Australian Drawing,
Museum of Contemporary Art,
Sydney and was also included
in the Keith & Elizabeth Murdoch
Travelling Fellowship exhibition,
Margaret Lawrence Gallery, VCA,
Melbourne, 2009. In 2008 Laith
McGregor was the winner of the
Robert Jacks Drawing Prize at
the Bendigo Art Gallery. Other
group exhibitions in 2008 were at
Westspace, Helen Gory Galerie,
all in Melbourne, and Sullivan and
Strumpf Gallery, Sydney.
Laith McGregor is represented by
Helen Gory Galerie, Melbourne
and Sullivan and Strumpf Gallery,
Sydney.
MEDIA KIT
TOO MUCH OF ME
7 PATHS THROUGHT THE ABSURD, (WITH DETOUR)*
Stuart Ringholt
Stuart Ringholt has a fine sense
of the dead-pan. For Too Much
of Me he has devised a waiting
room installation of chairs
made from cut-off bath tubs.
At first glance they have the
appearance of mass-produced
generic modernist furniture, but in
shades of green, pink and white
they are recognisable as the
retreats of once-soaking bodies,
repurposed for the tedium of
a generic waiting room. In his
performance works and writing,
Ringholt has often focussed on
emotional states such as anger
and embarrassment, as well as
the incidence of psychological
trauma more broadly. In his
photocollages, Ringholt makes
subtle amendments to existing
books that often render the self
as uncanny, double, displaced or
unseeing.
Ringholt was born in Perth,
Australia, in 1971 and currently
lives and works in Melbourne.
Recent solo exhibitions include
Low Sculpture, Anna Schwartz
Gallery, 2008; ACCA at Tolarno,
Melbourne, 2007; Studio 12,
Gertrude Contemporary Art
Spaces, 2006; and Backfence
Jokes, Display, Prague, 2005.
Ringholt’s work has been
presented in a number of curatorial
projects and group exhibitions
including Revolutions – Forms that
Turn, Biennale of Sydney, 2008;
Lost and Found: An Archaeology
of the Present, Tarrawara
Biennial, 2008; Zonal Marx, VCA
Gallery, Melbourne, 2007; and
New 05, Australian Centre for
Contemporary Art, Melbourne,
2005.
His recent performance projects
include: Anger Workshops, Art
Gallery of New South Wales,
Sydney, 2008; Untitled, Monash
University Museum of Art,
Melbourne, 2005; Rubbish Bin,
Holsevice Street, Prague, 2005
and Funny Fear Workshops,
Studio 5, Gertrude Contemporary
Art Spaces, Melbourne, 2004.
Stuart Ringholt is represented by
Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne
and Sydney.
WorkmanJones
Jason Workman and Patrick
Jones have collaborated as
WorkmanJones since 2004.
Workman lives in Brooklyn, New
York and Jones in Daylesford,
Victoria. Their practice is
ephemeral, performative, and
mostly occurs in public. Lowbudget, or no-budget, their works
are understated, sometimes comic
and gently, but seriously, anarchic.
WorkmanJones find creative
potential in our shared social
spaces, where art and the
business of life are able to
converge. Their performances
offer moments of respite,
lightness and humour, as well as
challenging our expectations of
public behaviour. In the city, they
adopt the suit as a uniform, only
to behave curiously, subversively,
amidst their many near clones:
they sit and lie despondently
on the ground; they set up their
own laneway café with flasks
of coffee, milk-crate stools and
a gas stove; they dance in the
street and perch on fire hydrants
like bored, oversized crows. In
women’s suits and stockings
they hang from tram-stops;
cartwheel down laneways and
undertake sequences of slowfrozen movements: ‘freedragging’
as they call it. In their daily jeans
and t-shirts they move through a
series of impromptu movements
figured against the local industrial
architecture. Through the way they
inhabit space WorkmanJones aim
to re-contextualise the everyday
and expand our sense of what is
possible.
Jason Workman was born in
1970 in New Zealand. He has
a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts
from RMIT University as well as a
nursing degree from AIT, Auckland
Patrick Jones was born in 1970
and has his Masters of Fine Arts
from the College of Fine Arts,
University of New South Wales.
WorkmanJones recently exhibited
in New Social Commentaries,
F.J Foundation Acquisitive prize,
Warrnambool Art Gallery, their
works have been screened at the
Center for Maine Contemporary
Art, Rockport, Maine, 2008;
Elsewhere Artist Collaborative,
Greensboro, North Carolina, 2008;
Infradig ii Daylesford, Victoria,
2007; Contention or Consensus,
Gasworks, Melbourne, 2006;
and 45, Poetry readings /
Filmscreening, Trentham, 2006.
Erwin Wurm
The work of Erwin Wurm combines
philosophy, art, politics, spirituality
and everyday life with a keen sense
of the absurd. In the photographic
series Instructions for idleness we
witness the artist following his own
directions: sleep for 2 months, think
about the void, be indifferent about
everything, stay in your pyjamas
all day. Too Much of Me will also
feature works from the ongoing
series of One minute sculptures,
where visitors to the gallery
are invited to follow the artist’s
instructional drawings, for instance,
to pose in the indicated stance
with a series of books Take your
most loved philosophers. Wurm’s
instructional works invite us to take
action, but also to find moments of
stillness, reflection and silliness.
Wurm was born in 1954 and lives
and works in Vienna, Austria. Wurm
graduated from the Academy of
Applied Arts and Academy of Fine
Arts in Vienna in 1982, and the
Mozarteum in Salzburg, in 1979.
Wurm has exhibited extensively
internationally since 1981. He has
presented exhibitions at the Peggy
Guggenheim Collection, Venice;
Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Galerie de
l’Uquam, Montreal; and the Centre
National de la Photographie, Paris,
as well as numerous other venues.
Samuel Beckett & Buster Keaton
FILM 1965
21 minutes
Writer: Samuel Beckett
O: Buster Keaton
Director: Alan Schneider
Samuel Beckett’s FILM will screen
in the circular vestibule entry to the
gallery. Silent except for a single
‘Shhhh!’, this black and white
short film features Buster Keaton
as O, a man who tries to evade an
all-seeing eye: E.
Based around Bishop Berkeley's
principle 'to be is to be perceived’,
Keaton's very existence conspires
against his efforts. FILM was
directed by Alan Schneider and
screens courtesy of Evergreen
Review and Barney Rosset.
Recent solo exhibitions include
The Artist Who Swallowed the
World, Kunstmuseum St Gallen,
Switzerland, and Deichtorhallen
Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany,
2007-8. Initiated by the Yerba
Buena Centre for the Arts in San
Francisco, the survey exhibition
I Love My Time, I Don’t Like My
Time: Recent Works by Erwin
Wurm toured venues in the USA
from 2004-7. In Australia, Erwin
Wurm: Glue your Brain, featured at
the Museum of Contemporary Art,
Sydney in 2005-6 and, in 2003,
Wurm’s One minute sculptures
were exhibited in Melbourne as
part of the visual arts program of
the Melbourne International Arts
Festival.
Erwin Wurm’s representatives
include Gallery Xavier Hufkens,
Brussels, Belguim and Gallery
Thaddeus Ropac, Salzburg and
Paris.
Samuel Beckett, FILM 1965,
Black and white, 35mm, 22 minutes
Directed by Alan Schneider
Starring Buster Keaton
Courtesy of Barney Rosset and Evergreen Review
MEDIA KIT
TOO MUCH OF ME
7 PATHS THROUGHT THE ABSURD, (WITH DETOUR)*
Above: WorkmanJones, Three songs 2007, DVD stills (top two
rows); WorkmanJones, Mashed 2009, DVD stills (third row),
courtesy of the artists
Below: Ronnie van Hout End dolls 2008, painted fibreglass,
clothing, baby wigs, cloth and synthetic stuffing, courtesy of The
Physics Room, Christchurch, New Zealand.
Too Much of Me: 7 paths
through the absurd, with detour
Exhibition Dates:
Monash University Museum of Art,
15 April – 20 June 2009
Monash University Museum of Art
MUMA
Ground Floor, Building 55
Monash University, Clayton Campus
Wellington Road, Clayton
Postal: Monash University VIC 3800
Melbourne, Australia
Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm
Saturday 2-5pm
T: 61 3 9905 4217
E: muma@adm.monash.edu.au
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Free entry
MONASH UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
EDUCATION AND PUBLIC PROGRAMS
DANCING WITH MYSELF
ADRIAN MARTIN
TOO MUCH OF ME:
7 PATHS THROUGH
THE ABSURD, (WITH DETOUR)*
THURSDAY 21 MAY 2009 4:30PM
An illustrated lecture featuring dance in film with absurd resonances:
When the postman Jacques Tati stops off at a local dance hall-café at midday and his body
spontaneously reacts, in the short L’Ecole des Facteurs (1947) ...
Monash University Museum of Art
MUMA
Ground Floor, Building 55
Monash University, Clayton Campus
Wellington Road, Clayton
Postal: Monash University VIC 3800
Melbourne, Australia
Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm
Saturday 2-5pm
T: 61 3 9905 4217
E: muma@adm.monash.edu.au
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Free entry
When a German teenager dances alone – or merely imagines it? – amidst the disco party lights in
Be My Star (2001) ...
When all the strippers and showgirls and ‘novelty dancers’ in all the tawdry bars of the world
gyrate for horrible men, yet somehow dance in their own world, only for themselves ...
When Chris Penn cuts loose, all combustion and rage, in a Prohibition-era speakeasy in Abel
Ferrara’s The Funeral (1996) ...
When Tracey Ullman, intoxicated with sex addiction, ‘does the Hokey-Pokey’ in the centre of a
circle at the old folks’ home (A Dirty Shame, 2004) ...
When the ‘full-flash, strutting performance’ of Tom Cruise in The Color of Money (1986) ‘flaunt[s]
his unchecked energy’ and ‘Scorsese and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus construct fluid
moving-camera frames for his cue-stick-twirling prances around pool tables’, which critic Rick
Thomspon calls ‘the best dancing in a pool room since Anna Karina in Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre
sa vie (1962)’, a lonely rock-swing wanting some attention and some distraction in a shady world
of men ...
And when Tati again – now an old, elegant man in his final feature film, shot on video for Swedish
television (Parade, 1974) – reprises one of his ancient stage routines, 'No Age For Dancing',
where his body subtly discombobulates to each new rhythm of each new age ...
No one really dances with themselves in cinema. If there is not a crowd, a community, a society watching,
there is a camera, a crew, and finally us, the audience. The paradox of dancing with oneself in film, and all it
allows, all it explores: states of solitude, of energy, of abandon and rapture, of nuttiness and automatism, of
elegance and dagginess …
Exhibition Dates:
Monash University Museum of Art
15 April – 20 June 2009
– Adrian Martin, March 2009
Bookings required.
Phone MUMA on 03 9905 4217 or email muma@adm.monash.edu.au for venue details and bookings
Adrian Martin
Since 1979, Dr. Adrian Martin has
combined work as a professional
writer and film critic with a
university career. He was film
reviewer for The Age between
1995 and 2006. For his numerous
books, essays and public lectures
he has won the Byron Kennedy
Award (Australian Film Institute)
and the Pascall Prize for Critical
Writing, and his PhD on film style
won the Mollie Holman Award. He
is the author of four books and
hundreds of essays on film, art,
television, literature, music, popular
and avant-garde culture.
For additional Education and Public Programs during Too Much of Me including MUMA podcasts
featuring participating artists see MUMA website:
www.monash.edu.au/muma/education
Left: Erwin Wurm Stay in your pyjamas all day 2001, from the series
Instructions for idleness 2001, type C photograph, courtesy of the artist
Right: Stuart Ringholt Untitled (waiting room) 2009, enamel steel, steel,
courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney
TOO MUCH OF ME
7 PATHS THROUGH THE ABSURD, (WITH DETOUR)*
RONNIE VAN HOUT | KIRSTY HULM | LAITH McGREGOR | STUART RINGHOLT
WORKMANJONES | ERWIN WURM *(SAMUEL BECKETT AND BUSTER KEATON)
Professor John Redmond, Chair,
and Max Delany, Director, MUMA,
cordially invite you to the opening of
Too Much of Me: 7 paths through
the absurd, (with detour)*
Curator: Geraldine Barlow
PRE-OPENING ARTISTS’ TALK
Saturday 18 April at 2.30pm
Geraldine Barlow in conversation
with participating artists Kirsty Hulm,
Patrick Jones (WorkmanJones),
Ronnie van Hout, Laith McGregor
& Stuart Ringholt.
OPENING FUNCTION
Saturday 18 April at 3.00pm
Monash University Museum of Art
Clayton Campus
With opening remarks at 3:45pm
Exhibition Dates
15 April – 20 June 2009
Monash University Museum of Art
Clayton Campus
Education & Public Program
Thursday 21 May 2009 4.30pm
Monash University Museum of Art
Clayton Campus
DANCING WITH MYSELF
Adrian Martin
An illustrated lecture featuring dance
in film with absurd resonances.
Bookings required
Phone 9905 4360 or email
muma@adm.monash.edu.au
Monash University Museum of Art
MUMA
Ground Floor, Building 55
Monash University, Clayton Campus
Wellington Road, Clayton
Postal: Monash University VIC 3800
Melbourne, Australia
Tuesday to Friday 10am-5pm
Saturday 2-5pm
T: 61 3 9905 4217
E: muma@adm.monash.edu.au
www.monash.edu.au/muma
Free entry
Erwin Wurm, Carrying a bomb 2003
pen on paper, courtesy of the artist and
Gallery Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, Belgium and
Gallery Thaddeus Ropac, Salzburg, Paris