Launch 2010
Nickk Hertzog . AnnaMaria Plescia . Stephanie Eather . Siobhan McMahon . Mitchel Brannan . Nick Waddell
12.3.2010 - 28.3.2010

Opening: Friday, March 12, 2010

Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm

LAUNCH 2010 is a unique, considered, and multifaceted collection of works that respond to the fundamental themes facing the emerging artists who created them—themes of change, development, tradition and identity.

In the 1950s, novelist Kurt Vonnegut was fresh out of university. Wondering where his career was headed, he took a job at Sports Illustrated magazine, where his first assignment was to write an article about a horse that had jumped a fence during a race in an attempt to escape. The story goes that after staring at the blank piece of paper in his typewriter all morning, Vonnegut wrote, “the horse jumped over the fucking fence” and then left the building. Disillusioned, and on the verge of abandoning his art altogether, Vonnegut took a teaching job at a writers’ workshop. During his time there, his thesis became a bestseller, and he began the novel Slaughterhouse Five, which would go on to become one of the most popular novels of all time.

Vonnegut’s story is dramatic, but not terribly unique. Many artists leaving university find themselves questioning their practice, their industry, their peers, and their professional identity. Each year, LAUNCH brings together a group of recent graduates whose work in part forms a response to these questions. Always a highlight of the year’s exhibition calendar, LAUNCH consistently features a dynamic, diverse and insightful group of artists. And LAUNCH 2010 is no exception.

The artists exhibiting in LAUNCH 2010 occupy a unique, sometimes coveted and often terrifying position between two places. Their work invites the viewer to ponder the reflection, expectation, transition and change that such a time brings.