Julie Ault
Encyclopedia
Julie Ault works as an artist
, curator
, and editor
, and has been one of the cofounders of Group Material, a New York-based artists collaborative that has produced over fifty exhibitions and public projects exploring relationships between politics
and aesthetics
.
and culture
. It questions the ways cultural economies present themselves, the conditional changes they undergo and to what extend they initiate a potential move. It is questions like: How does the presentation of history
and the past shape the image of the present? Which aspects of cultural practices are (deliberately) kept in the shadows of official historiography and why?
Ault’s and Beck’s projects have been exhibited internationally, including the recent show Installation at Secession (Vienna, 2006), Social Landscape, at the Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC, 2004) and Outdoor Systems, indoor distribution at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, 2000.
They also produce exhibition designs, most recently for X–Screen: Film Installations and Actions of the 1960s and 1970s, Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria, 2003.
scene of the 1980s
and 1990s
. Her most recent books include a monograph she edited on the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres
and a major publication on the art of Sister Corita, which received an extensive review on the group weblog Design Observer.
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
, curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
, and editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
, and has been one of the cofounders of Group Material, a New York-based artists collaborative that has produced over fifty exhibitions and public projects exploring relationships between politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
and aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
.
Artistic Practice
As an artist Julie Ault works on both individual projects, and as well on collaborative teamworks together with the artist Martin Beck for their contextual research projects. Their method can be regarded as an extended form of cultural praxis deriving from a general interest in the conservation and presentation of knowledgeKnowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
and culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
. It questions the ways cultural economies present themselves, the conditional changes they undergo and to what extend they initiate a potential move. It is questions like: How does the presentation of history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
and the past shape the image of the present? Which aspects of cultural practices are (deliberately) kept in the shadows of official historiography and why?
Ault’s and Beck’s projects have been exhibited internationally, including the recent show Installation at Secession (Vienna, 2006), Social Landscape, at the Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC, 2004) and Outdoor Systems, indoor distribution at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, 2000.
They also produce exhibition designs, most recently for X–Screen: Film Installations and Actions of the 1960s and 1970s, Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria, 2003.
Publishing
During the last years Julie Ault has been editing several books on arts and artists, with a specific focus on the art New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
scene of the 1980s
1980s
File:1980s decade montage.png|thumb|400px|From left, clockwise: The first Space Shuttle, Columbia, lifted off in 1981; American President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev eased tensions between the two superpowers, leading to the end of the Cold War; The Fall of the Berlin Wall in...
and 1990s
1990s
File:1990s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope floats in space after it was taken up in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields and the USA Lexie in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War; The signing of the Oslo Accords on...
. Her most recent books include a monograph she edited on the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Félix González-Torres
Felix Gonzalez-Torres was an American, Cuban-born visual artist."For Felix it was much more powerful to assume that the gay and straight audience was the same audience, that being a Cuban-born American is the same as being an American. And being American was something he was extremely proud of."...
and a major publication on the art of Sister Corita, which received an extensive review on the group weblog Design Observer.
Teaching activities
Julie Ault has taught at École Supérieure d'Art Visuel in Geneva, UCLA, the Rhode Island School of Design, CalArts, Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, Malmo Art Academy, and the Cooper Union. In 2006-07 at the Jutland Art Academy in Århus, Denmark (by way of DIVA - Danish International Visual Art Exchange Program).Exhibitions
- Installation, Secession, Vienna, 2006
- Information, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, NY, 2006
- Old News, LACE - Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA, 2005
- Points of Entry, for the City University of New York (CUNY), Queens, New York, 2004
- A Small Look at Giganticism, 2004
- Social Landscape, at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, 2004
- Outdoor Systems, indoor distribution at the Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst, Berlin, 2000
- Billboard: Art on the Road, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art - MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, 1999