Agatha Gothe-Snape

A young woman sits, reading a book, on a small sheepskin rug on the floor of an empty white room. The woman is leaning against a green vinyl chair.

A young person lies, reading a book, on a small sheepskin rug on a green vinyl chair, inside an art gallery. The person wears socks, and rests their feet against a column.

A woman stands, reading a book, next to a green vinyl chair in an art gallery. A small sheepskin rug is draped on the chair. On the wall behind the woman is a large black-and-white photograph of the artists Gilbert & George in tweed suits.

A woman sits, reading a book, on a small sheepskin rug on the floor of an art gallery. The woman is leaning against a green vinyl chair. Next to the woman is a large white box with a doorway, and a doormat with the text, “I want to leave a nice well-done child here.”

Agatha Gothe-Snape

born 1980 in Sydney, Australia
lives and works in Sydney, Australia

Lion’s Honey, 2019
performers, green vinyl chair, letter from the artist, the artist’s sheepskin rug, books, wall-mounted shelves

Each day of Making Art Public, Agatha Gothe-Snape’s Lion’s Honey saw a performer occupy the exhibition space by reading to themselves a chosen book. Starting with David Grossman’s Lion’s Honey, gifted to the artist by John Kaldor, the performers—including the artist herself—accumulated books of their own choosing to read throughout the exhibition.

Set against a backdrop of archival material, the durational performance saw audience engagement range from silent observation to long conversations and book recommendations. An Instagram account @lionshoney also formed part of the work.

In January 2020, the artist, together with curator Emily Sullivan, hosted a series of Reading Circles with the Lion’s Honey readers. Lion’s Honey: A Reader documents the performance from the perspective of the artist and readers and takes the form of a downloadable PDF which can be viewed or printed here.

Agatha Gothe-Snape works at the threshold of visual arts and performance. She has a highly trained and deeply attuned understanding of performance strategies and how they intersect not only with the visual but with the relational and architectural. As a result, her works are singular, embracing the complexity, ambiguity and slippages of both performance and language in an aesthetic style that is questioning, poetic and political. In 2017, Gothe-Snape presented a solo exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. She has presented solo exhibitions throughout Australia and in 2020, Monash Museum of Contemporary Art presented The Outcome is Certain, the first solo survey exhibition of Gothe-Snape’s work.

In 2018, Gothe-Snape participated in the Kaldor Public Art Projects and UNSW Art & Design Education Symposium, All Schools Should be Art Schools, and in 2019, she contributed a new work to Project 34: Asad Raza, Absorption.

Commissioned for Kaldor Public Art Projects as part of the exhibition Making Art Public: 50 Years of Kaldor Public Art Projects at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 7 September 2019 – 16 February 2020
Images courtesy the artist, Kaldor Public Art Projects and The Commercial Gallery, Sydney

Agatha Gothe-Snape

Agatha Gothe-Snape

Commissioned for Kaldor Public Art Projects as part of the exhibition Making Art Public: 50 Years of Kaldor Public Art Projects at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 7 September 2019 – 16 February 2020 Images courtesy the artist, Kaldor Public Art Projects and The Commercial Gallery, Sydney

Commissioned for Kaldor Public Art Projects as part of the exhibition Making Art Public: 50 Years of Kaldor Public Art Projects at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, 7 September 2019 – 16 February 2020
Images courtesy the artist, Kaldor Public Art Projects and The Commercial Gallery, Sydney