Hold on, soft edges ahead at Platform Arts

Geelong’s Platform Arts has announced the two shows it will be hosting from the end of this week.

Soft Edges will be presented under the co-curatorial artistic direction of multidisciplinary artist and former Platform LAB resident George Goodnow, working in collaboration with Carla Zimbler and Aphir.

Opening on Friday, June 25 in Gallery One, Soft Edges is a multimodal exhibition that reimagines road signs and streetscapes, exploring how objects that assert order and authority can be made tender, and transformed to tell different narratives from queer and femme perspectives.

The artwork combines the work of Goodnow, Zimbler and Aphir working across sculpture, video, sound and performance.

They come together in a hi-vis, audio visual installation which promotes interdisciplinary collaboration and the importance of making space for nuance, emotion, co-operation and the uncomfortable within predominantly male dominated fields.

“George Goodnow, Carla Zimbler, Aphir and DANDROGYNY create spatial experiences and sculptures that reimagine the limits of volume, capacity, material, and test the endurance of their embedded legacies,” head curator Amber Smith said.

Soft Edges will close on July 23 with a special performance by DANDROGYNY, with celebrations running from 6-8pm.

In Gallery Two, Hold, which also opens on Friday, June 25, is a multi-disciplinary group show that includes ceramics, painting, drawing, collage, textile, jewellery, and mixed-media works.

Artists include Sasha Alexandria, Sophie Cochrane, Anni Hagberg, Michelle Jing, Sam Kariotis, Sophia Koot, Iona Mackenzie, Jack Paterson, Steph Raad, Rosie Stanton, Mara Schwerdtfeger, and Zoe Baumgartner.

Different mediums are engaged in order to explore various issues of weight. The boundaries and barriers between human, object, nature, are seen and held and dropped.

The artists involved invite audiences to reflect on their relationship with and within your body, and remind us of our place on the earth and the objects that tether us to it.

Hold also concludes on July 23 with a special poetry slam event.

For more information on both exhibitions at the Little Malop Street venue, head to the Platform Arts website.