SPACE B
AFTER THE GOLDRUSH
KATE ROBERTSON
Snaking its way more than 200 kilometres from the Yarra Ranges across Melbourne’s open plains into Port Phillip Bay, the Yarra River is many things to many people. Having survived and supported European settlement, the Victorian gold rush, industrialisation, tourism and more, its history is as rich and diverse as the landscape it travels across. In her first solo exhibition After the Goldrush, Melbourne based artist Kate Robertson documents the Yarra River with photographs, large-scale posters and ceramic sculptures. Moreover, she uses ‘the river’ as a motif to explore the course of contemporary life and photography. From an image of a ship docked at port, a young girl catching raindrops on her tongue, to gutting a fish, After the Goldrush explores the malleability of photography and the fragmentation of our image and information saturated world. Ceramic sculptures serve as a souvenir and reference to photography’s ‘golden moment’. After the Goldrush embraces a more subjective approach in contrast to conventional documentary photography, blending fiction and non-fiction, utilising collaboration and performance, and blurring the line between subject and photographer.
