Stepping on snails in socks

Ingmar Apinis, Aylsa McHugh, Oliva Mroz, Steven Rendall & Julie Vinci

20 Jan

2024

2024

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10 Feb

2024

Stepping on snails in socks brings together five artists whose work mingles with the often-unconsidered abject states of being of our bodies.

Curated by Julie Vinci and featuring paintings and digital prints by Ingmar Apinis, Aylsa McHugh, Oliva Mroz, Steven Rendall (courtesy of Niagara Galleries) and Julie Vinci. This group exhibition focuses on the disparate forms of representation of human feet and legs, from an abject and almost ritualistic obsessive viewpoint.  

Brought about from a memory as recounted by Julie Vinci:  

“Inspired by an incident from my childhood, when late one night, feeling hungry, I walked through the dark kitchen and into the pantry in search of a snack. With my first footstep into the pantry, I was overcome by a sense of complete horror and total disgust at the sensation I had just experienced when I stepped on a snail wearing only socks.

I lifted my foot to see the wet stain of brown and green slime and crushed shell that was now attached to my body, feeling it through the sock and on my skin in an instant my hunger left me.

This instant and absolute flip of state is what I am feeling in each work in this exhibition. Bodies that are at caught in a place synchronously inhabiting beauty, ugliness, desire and repulsion. Being delicate and gross all at once.

Incongruous to societies current obsession with fitting either ‘this one or the other,’ our real interest and beauty lies in the dichotomy of simply being.”

Curated by Julie Vinci

Stepping on snails in socks 2024, installation view.

Installation View

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Artworks

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Artist Profile/s

Julie Vinci

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Melbourne (Naarm)

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Julie is a multi-disciplinary artist, whose practice is concerned with female representation and the fabricated role playing therein that forms the foundations for what is construed as a respectable functioning society.

After completing a Masters of Contemporary Art in 2019, Julie’s practice has reflected a sort of unshackling from these roles and through her new work is exploring the mechanisms for building new social structures. Her work, often with a filter of humour, continues to address the serious concerns of female rights.

Using photography, sculpture, painting and textiles, Julie examines the politicised space of the female body, utilising her own lived experiences as reference.  

Julie has held solo and group exhibitions at, Sarah Scout Presents, Westspace, Centre for Contemporary Photography, TCB ART Inc., Bundoora Homestead, Counihan Gallery, Craft Victoria and participated in Notfair Art Fair, Fringe and Next Wave Festivals.  

Julie was awarded the winner of the No Contest Art Prize and was a finalist in The Naked & Nude, Tatiara and Gosford Art Prizes.

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Steven Rendall

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Melbourne (Naarm)

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Steven Rendall’s work is littered with references to technology, art history, horror movies and pop music. Materials, images and meanings are scavenged and rearranged in various ways.

Rendall was born in the UK in 1969. He moved to Melbourne in 2000 where he currently lives and works. Steven Rendall is a lecturer in the School of Art at RMIT University. He has a Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours)from DeMontfort University in Leicester, undertook post-graduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools in London and completed a PhD at Monash University in2015.

Rendall has staged numerous exhibitions in Australia and the UK. His work is in various collections including The National Gallery of Victoria, The Monash University Collection, Artbank, RMIT University Art Collection, The City of Melbourne, St. Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne and St. Helier Hospital, London.

-Steven Rendall (courtesy of Niagara Galleries)

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Olivia Mroz

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Melbourne (Naarm)

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Olivia Mròz is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice predominantly centers on photography. Her work delves into the exploration of themes central to the human experience: queerness, sex, identity, and the complex interplay of trauma and emotional states. Employing a self-reflexive approach in her art, she manipulates her figures through layers of distortion and erasure, reflecting her subconscious psychological processing while simultaneously acting as grounding catharsis. An integral part of her creative process is creating images with any available photographic device embracing spontaneity, freedom and versatility. The immediate access to a work space enables a relaxed workflow and effortless immersion into a flow state. 

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Aylsa McHugh

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Melbourne (Naarm)

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My collage centred practice draws form a wide range of influences including feminism, sculpture, architecture, film and mythology. I am interested in the innate tendency of human psychology to find connections, patterns and familiarity. Yokai amambie and L'or des fous are the result of my ongoing investigations into marrying seemingly heterogeneous subject matter to create new and ambiguous readings. These assemblages are compelling and perverse, disjointed and harmonious, a celebration of the strangely beautiful. They inhabit an uncanny space and reveal a narrative that is divergent from the original purpose of the source material.

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Ingmar Apinis

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Melbourne (Naarm)

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Ingmar Apinis is a Naarm/Melbourne, Australia based artist who has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at a number of galleries including C3 Contemporary Art Space, Rubicon ARI, Kings ARI, Artereal Gallery, and Linden New Art.

Ingmar’s creative practice explores the role of the internet in everyday life. Working in a range of mediums including paint, screen printing, plaster and water transfer printing (an industrial production process also known as hydro-dipping) Ingmar’s work poses questions about online subcultures, digital queerness, future histories, and representations of the virtual and physical body.

In 2020 Ingmar was awarded the Ursula Hoff Printmaking Award.

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