Blow Back

Julie Rrap has engaged with representations of the body through portraiture, particularly the self portrait, for five decades. Redressing the absence of women artists in cultural histories has also been a longstanding preoccupation for Rrap. Blow Back is a collective portrait of 33 contemporary women artists, all peers of Rrap, who have each helped shape the landscape of recent artistic practice in Australia. Many of these women, including Rrap herself who appears in the work, were particularly influential to the development of conceptual photographic practice from the 1980s onwards.

In making these enigmatic photographic portraits, Rrap asked each sitter to perform the act of breathing out. She then hand etched a sheet of glass with an impression of her sitter’s exhale – what she calls an ‘exchange … me making the breath for them’ – which is overlaid on the print. As each breath is unique to the person producing it, its visualisation creates a poignant layer of identity and representation. Sustenance in its most simple form, the breath becomes an abstract portrait alongside the more explicitly representative photographs.

Julie Rrap has exhibited widely in Australia and overseas since 1982, in an experimental creative practice that has traversed photography, video, installation and sculpture. Rrap is one of the most influential artists of her generation. Her early photographic installations, in which she used her own body to contest the objectified presentation of women in the history of art, are critical to the development of Australian feminist artistic practice. She has received numerous awards and honours over the course of career including the Lady Fairfax Open Photography Award from the Art Gallery of New South Wales (1982); Artist's Residency, Cité des Arts, Paris; Power Institute, University of Sydney (1986); The Redlands Westpac Art Prize (2008) and the University of Queensland National Artists’ Self-portrait prize (2009). Major survey exhibitions include: The Vizard Foundation Contemporary Artist Project (2015), Julie Rrap: Remaking the World, at the Potter Museum of Art and Julie Rrap: Body Double presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, (2007). Rrap‘s practice has attracted substantial critical writing including dedicated publications for the MCA and Potter Museum exhibitions. Her work is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia and all major Australian state galleries.

Top row (L–R): Barbara Campbell, Hilarie Mais, Petrina Hicks, Debra Phillips, Justyna Stanczew, Elizabeth Pulie, Cherine Fahd, Salote Tawale, Merilyn Fairskye, Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, Kusum Normoyle

Middle row (L–R): Elizabeth Day, Anne Graham, Mikala Dwyer, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Justene Williams, Jacky Redgate, Joyce Hinterding, Jill Scott, Sarah Goffman, Danica Kneževic, Robyn Backen

Bottom row (L–R): Maria Cruz, Sylvia Griffin, Anne Zahalka, Noelene Lucas, Elwira Skowronska, Anne Ferran, Rosemary Laing, Nell, Janet Laurence, Eugenia Raskopoulos, Julie Rrap

Gift of the artist 2024. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program.
© Julie Rrap/Copyright Agency, 2024