Great Movements of Feeling is a multi-disciplinary project that explores emotion as a cognitive and bodily force. Originally developed for the 2018 Next Wave Festival through the Gertrude Contemporary Emerging Curators Program, the exhibition considers emotion through personal and historical lenses; as a flowing drive that occurs between people, concepts and objects.

This structure brings together the two historical ‘camps’ of emotion theory: emotion as primarily tied to bodily sensations, and emotion as thought. The works in this exhibition inhabit facets of emotion congealing at different points on this spectrum: sometimes weighted towards a bodily sensation, at other times towards a cognitive judgment, or somewhere in between.

Featuring work from Megan Cope (Quandamooka), Helen Grogan (Australia), Nik Pantazopoulos (Australia), Stuart Ringholt (Australia), Sriwhana Spong (New Zealand / United Kingdom) and Sue Williamson (South Africa) and a Medieval stained glass window (artist unknown). These artworks wrestle with ideas of emotion, of content that is loaded with feeling, and at times where emotion might sit within art practice, touching on ethical, aesthetic, social, and spiritual dimensions. In all, there is a sense of historical weight threading through: the inheritance of trauma, of love, of the passing down of feeling.