Melbourne Art Foundation is thrilled to announce Julie Rrap represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (Gadigal Country/Sydney), as the recipient of the $100,000 2024 Commission in partnership with the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) and supported by Artwork Transport and Creative Australia

SOMOS (Standing On My Own Shoulders) is the 10^th commission of the program and is set to be unveiled at the 17^th iteration of Melbourne Art Fair.

Rrap, one of Australia’s most recognised female artists, is widely considered to have contributed to the foundations of contemporary feminist art in Australia. Working for over four decades with a range of different mediums, Rrap’s work challenges, subverts and reinterprets the definition of women and their image in surprising ways, often using her own nude body to do so.

“SOMOS (Standing On My Own Shoulders), is a bronze life-size sculptural work that is a dynamic composition in which both casts of my body are caught in a moment of action as one figure appears to support the other on its shoulders,” said Julie Rrap. “While SOMOS echoes the “heroic” tradition of bronze figurative sculpture, it subverts that history by representing an older female body traditionally rendered invisible. This work strongly consolidates many of the concerns that have preoccupied me in my practice over the last 40 years and to have the opportunity to create SOMOS as a major work for this commission and the Art Gallery of Western Australia is a career highlight and one which will create an incredibly important conversation.”

After its unveiling at Melbourne Art Fair 2024, SOMOS will head to MCA for Rrap’s exhibition Past Continuous opening June 2024. It will then move to its permanent home in the AGWA collection.