Some Like It Hot
From Saturday 31 August 2024
To Sunday 10 November 2024
Some Like it Hot is an exhibition that intersects sweat, sex, desire and discord in Darwin, Australia’s hottest and most remote capital city.
The exhibition showcases works by much-lauded Territory-based artists Therese Ritchie and Franck Gohier, well known for their satirical work that combines wit and humour with astute social observation. Here curator Wendy Garden reflects on their practice through the lens of gender representation in the context of settler imaginings of the tropics.
Both Gohier and Ritchie have spent much of their impressive careers in Darwin, putting human behaviour under a philosophical microscope. Ritchie brings her background in journalism, her political awareness and her sharp eye for design to her insightful take on the world we live in. Gohier born in France arrived in Australia as a child and moved to Darwin with his family in the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy. Sifting through the domestic debris of that devastation began a fascination with collage and the expressive possibility of utilising seemingly random combinations to highlight an inherent absurdity. Both artists unsettle us and encourage us to engage more critically with perceptions of the everyday.
Reflecting its Top End genesis, this exhibition about heat, place and gendered behaviour is challenging, amusing, irreverent and impressive. but most of all, Some Like it Hot is very cool.
Artists
Franck Gohier
Born 1968 Brittany, St Nazaire, France arr. Australia 1972
Franck Gohier has developed a national profile for his satirical paintings and prints, which are informed by his political and social consciousness honed from living in Darwin. Gohier was born in Brittany, France and arrived in Australia as a child with his parents. They moved to Darwin in 1975 in the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy. Gohier completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking at the Northern Territory University (Charles Darwin University) in 1991 and has had an ongoing exhibiting career since 1987.
He was a lecturer and technician in the Printmaking Department of the Northern Territory University in the 1990s and together with George Watts and Leon Stainer set up print workshops, later known as Northern Editions. During this period Gohier collaborated on limited edition prints with various Indigenous communities and setup an art program for Aboriginal inmates at Berrimah Prison in collaboration with Correctional Services and 24HR Art. He established Red Hand Prints with Shaun Postie in 1997, an open access studio that held community workshops and actively supported the printmaking activities of Indigenous artists.
Gohier has exhibited widely around Australia and in Germany and Indonesia. He was the subject of a major retrospective held at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in 2018 entitled ‘Franck Gohier: A thousand miles from everywhere.’
His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including ‘Streetwise: contemporary street culture’, National Gallery of Australia, 2015 and ‘The Phantom show’ – which travelled to regional galleries in New South Wales from 2015 to 2016.
Other exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Canberra Museum and Art Gallery; Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney; Fremantle Arts Centre; Cairns Regional Gallery; Griffith Regional Art Gallery; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery; Tweed River Art Gallery; Tamworth Regional Art Gallery; Wagga Wagga Art Gallery; Dubbo Regional Gallery and Hazlehurst Regional Gallery amongst others. He has held residencies at the University of Wollongong and Casula Powerhouse Museum.
His work is held in major institutional collections around Australia and private collections in New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Netherlands, South America and the United States. Mitchell Fine Art in Brisbane and James Makin Gallery in Melbourne represent Gohier.
Therese Ritchie
Born Newcastle 1961
Therese Ritchie is critically acclaimed for her astute social commentary combined with pathos, humour and an unwavering eye for the poetic resonances in the everyday. She moved to Darwin from Sydney in 1981 and has been an exhibiting artist since 1986. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Northern Territory University (Charles Darwin University) in 1985 and undertook further studies at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. She completed a Graduate Diploma in Film and Television/Animation in 1999 and in the same year was awarded the Australian Children’s Television Foundation Best Animation. She completed a Masters by Research in Visual Arts at Charles Darwin University in 2004.
Ritchie was a freelance photographer for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Time and Who Magazine amongst others. She has worked as a designer/illustrator and photographer on assignments including projects for the Darwin Legal Service and Territory Health Services. She was inaugural co-director of Green Ant Research Arts and Publishing with Chips Mackinolty in 1991 and was the photographer and designer for three publications published by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission including the 1997 Royal Commission into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. She lectured in Graphic Design at the Northern Territory University between 2000 and 2002.
Ritchie won the Fremantle Print Award in 2000 for a collaborative work with Chips Mackinolty. In 2007 she was awarded an Australia Council for the Arts, Australian Artist in Residency at the 18th Street Arts Centre in Los Angeles where she spent three months making work in response to the plight of people on Skid Row.
An exhibition with Chips Mackinolty was held at the Charles Darwin University Gallery in 2010 and in 2019 a major survey exhibition of her work, ‘Therese Ritchie: burning hearts’, opened at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. In 2012 she was invited to participate in the exhibition ‘Contemporary Australia: Women’ at the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art and other group exhibitions include the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; Perth Institute of Contemporary Art; Fremantle Arts Centre; Lismore Regional Art Gallery; Flinders University Art Museum and Mosman Art Gallery amongst others. She was invited to exhibit in France and Indonesia. Her work is held in several major collections in Australia.
