Australian artist
Julie Gough (born 1965) is an artist, writer and curator based in Tasmania, Australia.
Early life and education.
Gough was born in 1965 in Melbourne. Her paternal heritage is Scottish and Irish, while her maternal Aboriginal heritage is of the Trawlwoolway people of Tebrikunna, and her lineage has been traced to her ancestor, great-great-great-grandmother Dolly Dalrymple. She has lived mostly in Hobart, Tasmania, since late 1993.
In 1986, Gough completed a Bachelor of Arts (pre-history and anthropology) at the University of Western Australia. In 1989 she earned a Diploma of art at St Brigid's and Northbridge TAFE Colleges in Perth, and from 1991 to 1993 studied for a Bachelor of Visual Arts, at Curtin University in Perth.
In 1994, she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of Art at the University of Tasmania. After completing a Master's degree in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths College, University of London (on a Samstag scholarship from the University of South Australia ), in 1998, Gough moved on to her doctorate, which she earned in 2001 at the University of Tasmania. In her thesis, entitled "Transforming histories: The visual disclosure of contentious pasts", she explored her family history and heritage. Her thesis focused on reinterpreting the past via the artistic display of disparate objects which reframe narratives.
Career.
Artwork.
Gough's sculptural works have included the use of kitsch bric-a-brac sourced from op shops, often featuring racist or dated motifs. Using these relics in her art is about challenging and subverting their historical meanings.
In 2001, her work, "Driving Black Home" (2000) contrasted with John Glover's colonial depiction of Tasmania, as part of the "Australian Collection Focus series" at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. The Gallery withheld Benjamin Law's busts of Woureddy and Trucaninny from the exhibition at Gough's request, noting their history as anthropological objects.
For the bicentenary of Federation, Gough was commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria to create an artwork in response to Emanuel Phillips Fox's "The Landing of Captain Cook". The resulting installation, "Chase", a suspended ti-tree forest with symbolic red cloth, was reviewed by Gabriella Coslovich as sitting in an "...uneasy relationship..." in display alongside Fox's painting. Margaretta Pos reviewed the work as having stillness and menace, with a sense of "...redcoats in the shadows." One of the Gallery's deputy art directors, Frances Lindsay, described the work as extending the narrative from the painting, to the unseen context of displacement of Aboriginal people.
A survey exhibition of her work entitled "Tense Past: Julie Gough" opened at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in 2019.
Other activities.
In September 2001, Gough presented on the "Archaeology of nostalgia" at the "Portraiture and Place" symposium (jointly run by the National Portrait Gallery and the University of Tasmania).
She worked as a curator of Indigenous art at the National Gallery of Victoria from 2003 until December 2004, and was a lecturer in visual arts at the James Cook University in 2005.
Gough's undertook a residency at Woolmers Estate in 2018, researching her familial connections to Norfolk Plains, Woolmers and Brickendon estates.
As of July 2019[ [update]] Gough has/had a part-time role at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
Recognition and honours.
In 2020 Gough featured as one of six Indigenous artists in the ABC TV series "This Place: Artist Series". The series is a partnership between the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the National Gallery of Australia, in which the producers travelled to the countries of "some of Australia's greatest Indigenous artists to share stories about their work, their country, and their communities".
Gough was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2021.
Collections.
Gough's work is held in a number of private and public collections, including: