Castlemaine & Castlemaine
By Julie Lovett
Apr 17th @ 11:00 am – May 3rd @ 4:00 pm
The work presented at Lot 19 emerges from the unstable space of the artist residency — a site that promises reflection and transformation but often delivers something far less resolved. Working across painting and film, I treat the act of making as both subject and material, allowing the work to turn back on itself.
I place myself within the work as a semi-fictional, autobiographical character — performing the role of the artist somewhere between sincerity and parody. The work leans into self- portraiture, self-consciousness and the pressure to produce meaning in unfamiliar surroundings.
The Australian landscape operates as a constant backdrop — echoing my earlier engagement with the Irish landscape — but here it becomes a stage set as much as a site, exposing the constructed nature of the work.
Using banal narratives, humour and self-interrogation, the exhibition resists resolution, lingering instead in something unresolved, self-aware and slightly uncomfortable.
Julie Lovett is an artist from County Kerry, Ireland, working across painting, performance and durational video. Her practice draws on the landscape, labour and lived experience of her rural upbringing. Working from this context has required her to generate her own opportunities, shaping a strong sense of independence and authorship.
Her work explores the tension between artistic professionalism, vulnerability and belonging. She holds a BA from LSAD and an MFA from the University of Ulster, and has exhibited nationally and internationally.
