Julie Rrap has been a major figure in Australian contemporary art for over 25 years. Since the mid-1970s, she has worked with photography, painting, sculpture, performance and video in an ongoing project concerned with representations of the body, with a particular emphasis on the female body within western art history. Photography has been a particular focus because as a medium it bridges fine art and popular imagery, allowing the artwork to dialogue with broader concerns about the body. The use of digital techniques has allowed the exploration of the surrealism of the image in a world gone surreal with medical interventions into the body.
Rrap’s work has been selected for numerous international and national exhibitions, including the 1986, 1987, 1992 and 2008 Sydney Biennales, and more recently the 2007 Auckland Triennale, the 2009 Clemenger Contemporary Art Prize, NGV, Melbourne and in 2010, the Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea. She has won the Hermann's Art Award for her photograph 'Overstepping' in 2001, the Redlands Art prize for a combined sculpture and photographic work in 2008 and the University of Queensland National Artists’ Self-Portrait Prize for her video work, '360 Degree Self-Portrait', in 2009.
In 2007, a publication and 25-year survey exhibition, 'Body Double', was curated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney by Victoria Lynn.
Rrap's works are held in every major public collection in Australia as well as in many corporate and private collections in Australia and overseas.
