Trace 2015: Biennial Exhibition & Art Auction In the Streets of 4101

TRACE is a biennial exhibition and art auction in unexpected West End venues. It raises needed funds for Community Plus’s vital services, and integrates contemporary art within the community. The artists in TRACE are among Australia’s most important, and many have strong connections to the area.

Visit the art in a fruit shop, book stores, a barber, a record store, a bakery, and lots of other unlikely venues along Boundary and Vulture Streets in West End. Then bid for the work online, with proceeds supporting the indispensable, indomitable Community Plus+ and their work with marginalised and vulnerable community members.

Since the 1960s many artists have investigated different ways to exhibit art outside of purpose-built galleries and museums. Often this would occur in rented spaces, or in derelict or abandoned buildings, or in lane ways or places where art could only be seen from trains, buses or cars. Some of this development was the outcome of artists using ephemeral materials intended to have no longevity like recycled materials or was only on view for one night like video projections, or involved physical performance, or work that evolved with viewers participation. But some of the art was exhibited in this way as a means to reject cultural elitism that seemed to be associated with certain art, and to press for art being part of everyday life.

TRACE draws from this trajectory of art being found in places outside of galleries and museums.

Exhibition from May 18 until June 9. Online bidding up until 9pm on June 12.

Guided walking tour of the exhibition on Saturday June 6 – meeting at West End Community House, 4 Norfolk Street, West End at 1.30pm for 2.00pm departure – with curator, Susan Ostling and local historian and Community Plus+ committee member, Tim Quinn.