"My PhD research investigates the provocations of the gestating body. To gestate is to exist in a mode of corporeal ambiguity. The gestating woman is intimately entwined with another, embodying a condition of physiological and philosophical entanglement as she brings another being into existence from within the interior of her body. I seek to articulate the phenomenological significance and biological complexity of the gestating body in non-figurative works of art, concentrating on the lived experiences of becoming round, of becoming multiple, and of imagining an interior bodily space.

I worked with geometric piecing and cane weaving to make sculptural forms sharing an affinity with the gravid body, with transparent and translucent materials to conjure a sense of the corporeal ambiguity between the gestating woman and the conceptus, and with a methodology of making art in-situ, a methodology that parallels the experience of the gestating woman who is creating an organism that cannot be completely known until it is born, just as the artist cannot know in advance the work made in-situ until it is finished. The works of art resulting from this research invite the viewer to imaginatively engage with the corporeal significance of the gestating body, and the research contributes to the fields of feminist art practice, feminist philosophies of phenomenology, and visual biological humanities."

Julie Monro-Allison works with weaving, crochet and other textile methods to make sculptural forms. She has held six solo exhibitions and participated in a number of curated group exhibitions, primarily in artist-run and community galleries including 146 ArtSpace, Blindside, Sawtooth, the Moonah Arts Centre and the Australian National Capital Artists Gallery. In 2019 she was a finalist in the Hidden Rookwood Sculpture Prize and the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, and in 2018 was highly commended in the School of Art and Design Drawing Prize. She has undertaken artist residencies with the Inner West Council, Kickstart Arts, Nillumbik Shire Council, Sturt Craft Centre, Vancouver Arts Centre, Craft Victoria and the former Marrickville Council.

This exhibition is free and open to the public during Gallery hours; Tuesday to Friday 10.30AM – 3.00PM

All attendees must sign-in using Check-In Canberra App