Farewell drinks, tasting menu + art tour : Suzie Blake S01E03 Blood Mountain

About

The BLOOD MOUNTAIN tasting menu will include ;

• A guided art walkthrough of the exhibition, learning about the artist, her ideas, practice and her current body of work;
• 3 cocktails which were created in collaboration with the artist specifically for her exhibition;
• A  pair of the BLOOD MOUNTAIN cocktail artist glasses.  

This event will run only for two days, Friday, 31 May and Saturday, 1st June, each session will take place at 6-30pm. Tickets are $40 per person. Despite the vast space of Grau Projekt, only a limited number of tickets are available here.

It's the last opportunity to see this important and topical exhibition and combine two great pastimes, art, and drinking.

Suzie Blake's “Blood Mountain” is a sculptural installation featuring a 3-meter-high mound of red clothing and apparel. Upon closer inspection t-shirts with feminist slogans like “Girl Power” and “The Future is Female” can be seen poking through the debris. 

Suzie speaks of the show, "Mountain, the archetype of ascent and power – the bridge between heaven and earth is reimagined in the form of greed and waste. My work asks, what is the cost of bloated, arrogant and tyrannical man-made structures? And yet what is the role of feminism within such structures? At what price does the feminist movement come, and whose empowerment does it serve? One cannot ignore the inherent irony in Western women proclaiming their feminist or pro-women stance via an item of clothing made by one of the 85% female garment manufacturers living in dire circumstances in the developing world".

Analogous to the installation is a series of print works, revealing Blake’s continued exploration of the female body and its relationship with the earth. These ethereal, mystical, yet simultaneously foreboding photomontages have been developed using both analogue and digital techniques, combining scans, and 35mm film, double exposure and solarizing. 

Suzie muses, "My art reveals the continual fascination I have with the female body. Through my practice, I explore the disruptive force of female life as it jostles with the man-made. Camille Paglia says, “society is an artificial construction, a defense against nature’s power”. It is this power that interests me. Societal organisations such as religion, science, and politics are the skin into which I inject the chaos, dynamism, creation and destruction of feminine archetype".

In her practice, Suzie spans photography, film, installation, and sculpture; she often employs or alludes to the presence of female bodily secretions and substances; breastmilk, amniotic fluid and menstrual blood have all been featured in her work.  

Suzie Blake was born in Melbourne, she completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts at The University of Melbourne, Victorian College of the Arts, in 2002. After ten years working as a photographer in London, Suzie returned to Australia to complete a Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2017.

BLOOD MOUNTAIN COCKTAIL MENU:

LAKE WOMAN 
Canary melon, Dry & Bianco Vermouths, Fukamushi Sencha Tea, fermented citrus with Angostura bitters floral shard

BLOOD MOUNTAIN  
Fermented Negroni cocktail, Poppy Grapefruit & distillate, Blood orange and charged with Sparkling Pinot Noir

LEAF
Fresh fig Brandy, Chicory Scotch, Smashed blackberries & lemon, drenched in Bitters-stained Champagne

PINK PALMS
Pine shoot Gin, Italian Aperitivi, Aromatic Cherry, Herbal liqueurs, Peychaud’s bitters and yuzu

GOLD RIVER
(aka Eve’s Apple: the cocktail that thought it was a beer)
Apple Apertivi, roasted apple reduction, Italian bitters, Amari, Bourbon, artisanal Cider