CURATORIAL PROJECTS
selected exhibitions
ANDY WARHOL: ICONS
6 march - 4 may 2024
wanneroo Regional gallery
ongoing exhibition until 2026
​​
curated by Robert buratti in
collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia
​
the first west Australian exhibition dedicated to the pop master with 53 original works including 'Elvis', 'soupcans' and the 'electric chair' suite. valued at $148 million, the exhibition is presented in partnership with the national gallery of australia and the sharing the national collection initiative​
​
​
Andy Warhol, untitled 1968 from the Campbell’s Soup I portfolio, 1968, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ARS.
OCCULTURE: DARK ARTS
12 August–19 November 2017
city gallery wellington, New Zealand
​
​
This show explores contemporary art’s role in the process of occultation (a term first used by Andre Breton in his 1929 Surrealist Manifesto). It brings together New Zealand and international artists who push the symbolic, formal and material languages of esoteric or occult traditions into new forms. Australian artist Mikala Dwyer casts a spell in the form of a wall painting. Dane Mitchell’s silk banners are printed with hand gestures that activate magical thinking and open up possibilities for astral perception. Taiwanese artist Yin-Ju Chen’s charcoal Liquidation Maps link atrocities in Asia to specific astrological permutations. Each invokes invisible energies and forces to charge the gallery space.
​
These and other contemporary artists—working across drawing, painting, sculpture, film, sound, printmaking and photography—are brought into conversation with key historical figures of the occult tradition. At the heart of the exhibition is a suite of ‘nightmare paintings’ by English occultist, magician and poet Aleister Crowley, and the trance-induced work of his Antipodean devotee Rosaleen Norton. Crowley’s paintings were made in Sicily in the early 1920s, as he was establishing his Abbey of Thelema. They were part of his attempt to integrate art into his magical theory. Norton was born ‘during a thunderstorm’ in Dunedin in 1917. She moved to Sydney, where she became known as ‘the Witch of King’s Cross’ and was persecuted for her transgressive behaviour and for her mystical art works summoning pagan entities. This is the first time either have been exhibited in New Zealand.
​
ARTISTS
​
Kenneth Anger, Leo Bensemann, Yin-Ju Chen, Eleanor Cooper, Aleister Crowley, Simon Cuming, Mikala Dwyer, FULGUR, Henry Fuseli, Jason Greig, Curtis Harrington, Dane Mitchell, Rosaleen Norton, Tony Oursler, Fiona Pardington, Lorene Taurerewa, Thomson & Craighead, Brendon Wilkinson
​
​
​
VENICE BIENNALE 2013
​
Central Pavilion, Giardini
​​
advisory on selected works (central pavilion): Robert buratti
​
Curator: Massimiliano Gioni. Il Palazzo Enciclopedico (The Encyclopedic Palace) investigates the desire to see and know everything: it is a show about obsessions and about the transformative power of the imagination. The exhibition opens in the Central Pavilion with a presentation of Carl Gustav Jung’s Red Book. “In the vast hall of the Arsenale - redesigned for this occasion in collaboration with architect Annabelle Selldorf - the exhibition sketches a progression from natural forms to studies of the human body, to the artifice of the digital age, loosely following the typical layout of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cabinets of curiosities. Through the many examples of artworks and figurative expressions on view, including films, photographs, videos, bestiaries, labyrinths, performances and installations, The Encyclopedic Palace emerges as an elaborate but fragile construction, a mental architecture that is as fantastical as it is delirious.”
​
Artists
​
Aleister Crowley, frieda harris, xu solar, harry smith
​
​
​
WINDOWS TO THE SACRED
national touring exhibition 2013 - 2015
​
S.H Ervin Gallery, NSW
Mornington Peninsula Regional gallery, VIC
Devonport Regional gallery, TAS
​​
curated by Robert buratti
​
Windows to the Sacred: An Exploration of the Esoteric is a multi- disciplinary exhibition, offering an audio and visual exploration of the existence of a universe beyond our world.
In 2008 the Pompidou Centre, Paris, staged the exhibition Traces of the Sacred, which examined artists engaged with the exploration of the sacred in art. Throughout history artists have represented spiritual themes; in the past this meant producing overtly religious works but in the 20th century when organised, mainstream religion lost its influence over artists, they didn’t abandon the idea of the sacred entirely — they just discovered new ways to explore the basic human urge toward transcendence.
​
Artists
​
DANIE MELLOR (AUS), JAMES GLEESON (AUS), ALEX PROYAS (AUS), JESS JOHNSON (NZ), Abdul-Rahman Abdullah (AUS), Aleister Crowley (UK), Rosaleen Norton (AUS), Thor Engelstad (AUS), Austin Spare (UK), Jeff Martin (AUS), Kenneth Anger (USA), Harry Smith (USA).
​
​
​
