Julie Rrap


Julie Rrap is an Australian contemporary artist. She was born in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia. Her family relocated to a small town, Nerang, in the Hinterlands off the Gold Coast, Queensland, which is where she grew up with her sister and brothers including Mike Parr- an artist who she often collaborates with. In 1976, Rrap married Bill Brown, a painter. Julie Rrap then lived in France and Belgium between 1986 and 1994.

Artist career

Rrap's artistic career began in the 1970s where she explored painting, performance, photography, sculpture and video.
In Julie Rraps early career during the 1970s she was running a photographic business with John Delacour who is also a photographer. The business mainly specialised in reproductions of magazines, catalogues, and fine art books.
In the 1980s Rrap focused a lot of her time at universities and art schools such as the Australian Centre for Photography, Alexander Mackie College, Medowbank and East Sydney Technical College, and Sydney College of the Arts, providing lectures in art and design, painting, photography, and photo-media. Julie exhibited her first solo exhibition as Julie Brown in 1982, 'Disclosures: A Photographic Construct’ held at the Central Street Gallery.
Rrap frequently travels between Europe and Australia for exhibitions and the creation of her works and is now represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney and Arc One Gallery, Melbourne.

Influences

Rrap’s artistic influences throughout her career have always been the human form and how it is represented in media and society, particularly females in Western Society.
Julie Rrap uses this influence to "…poke fun at the stereotypical representations of women transforming these characters into active agents for change." – Julie Rrap. Using her body, suggestions of the body and representations of the body to complete her work.

Education

A Bachelor of Arts Degree in English, Classic and Fine Arts, completed between 1969 and 1971 at the University of Queensland.
Rrap then went to the National Art School at East Sydney Technical College in 1974 to study painting and drawing.
In 1975 Rrap worked with members of a performance group from the University of Sydney, as an external student in the ‘Tin Sheds’ art workshops.
Rrap then studied photo-media at Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education in Sydney during 1976.
In 2010 Rrap completed her PhD at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Awards and honours