Stephen Bram
200 Gertrude Street

For the site-spe­cif­ic instal­la­tion, 200 Gertrude Street, at Gertrude Con­tem­po­rary, Stephen Bram insert­ed six wall planes into the gallery that enfold­ed the space in an all-encom­pass­ing con­certi­na. Three deep ​‘val­leys’ carved the rooms, repeat­ing from floor to ceil­ing. Walk­ing through these angu­lar pas­sages the view­er was var­i­ous­ly enveloped in light and dark; we expe­ri­ence an inter­nal space that refers con­stant­ly to the out­side world.

This work drew on Bram’s ongo­ing project that uses two or three van­ish­ing points in space to cre­ate a struc­tur­al form. These points are out­side the bound­aries of the work and so the instal­la­tion con­stant­ly reaf­firms its rela­tion­ship with the exter­nal world despite its for­mal appearance.

Our phys­i­cal, spa­tial expe­ri­ence of the instal­la­tion fore­ground­ed a philo­soph­i­cal enquiry; how is mean­ing attrib­uted through the rela­tion­ship of objects and peo­ple Bram’s project explores this ques­tion by refus­ing to attribute sig­nif­i­cance to the van­ish­ing points he nominates.

Abstract art­work is some­times con­sid­ered either work about noth­ing or work about itself. In 200 Gertrude Street it was instead abstrac­tion that encom­passed the arbi­trari­ness of mean­ing mak­ing. Bram made vis­i­ble the struc­tur­al sup­ports of the forms; the tim­ber struts of each wall reveal them­selves to the view­er and the par­al­lax view of the work shifts con­stant­ly in accor­dance with our movement.

200 Gertrude Street was the first in series of exhi­bi­tions by Gertrude Con­tem­po­rary alum­ni in cel­e­bra­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty of artists who have shaped a Mel­bourne insti­tu­tion over three decades.