Exposed

Curation of a fashion parade (Exposed) of QUT student swimwear designs held in conjunction with the ‘Woollen Mermaids’ (history of swimwear) exhibition at QLD Museum. The research explored the exhibition of ‘cutting edge’ swimwear produced with non-traditional fabrics (wool) and experimented with display /presentation styles for fashion parades in museum settings. The paid ticketed event was attended by over 800 people.

‘Spotty Dick’ : a research experiment to test design suitability for the use of jewelled spot matrix patterns for UV aware men’s swimwear

The great male Aussie cossie is growing spots. The ‘dick’ tog, as it is colloquially referred to, is linked to Australia’s national identify with overtly masculine bronzed Aussie bodies clothed in this iconic apparel. Yet the reality is our hunger for worshiping the sun and the addiction to a beach lifestyle is tempered by the pragmatic need for neck-to-knee, or more apt head-to-toe, swimwear. Spotty Dick is an irreverent play on male swimwear – it experiments with alternate modes to sheath the body with Lyrca in order to protect it from searing UV’s and at the same time light-heartedly fools around with texture and pattern; to be specific, black Scharovsky crystals, jewelled in spot patterns - jewelled clothing is not characteristically aligned to menswear and even less so to the great Aussie cossie. The crystals form a matrix of spots that attempt to provoke a sense of mischievousness aligned to the Aussie beach larrikin. Ironically, spot patterns are in itself a form of a parody, as prolonged sun exposure ages the skin and sun spots can occur if appropriate sun protection is not used. ‘Spotty Dick’ – a research experiment to test design suitability for the use of jewelled spot matrix patterns for UV aware men’s swimwear. The creative work was paraded at 56 shows, over a 2 week period, and an estimated 50,000 people viewed the work.

Finitude (Mallee:Time)

An interactive installation with full body interface, digital projection, multi-touch sensitive screen surfaces, interactive 3D gaming software, motorised dioramas, 4.1 spatial sound & new furniture forms - investigating the cultural dimensions of sustainability through the lens of 'time'. “Time is change, time is finitude. Humans are a finite species. Every decision we make today brings that end closer, or alternatively pushes it further away. Nothing can be neutral”. Tony Fry DETAILS: Finitude (Mallee:Time) is a major new media/sculptural hybrid work premiered in 2011 in version 1 at the Ka-rama Motel for the Mildura Palimpsest #8 ('Collaborators and Saboteurs'). Each participant/viewer lies comfortably on their back on the double bed of Room 22. Directly above them, supported by a wooden structure, not unlike a house frame, is a semi-transparent Perspex screen that displays projected 3D imagery and is simultaneously sensitive to the lightest of finger touches. Depending upon the ever changing qualities of the projected image on this screen the participant can see through its surface to a series of physical dioramas suspended above, lit by subtle LED spotlighting. This diorama consists of a slowly rotating series of physical environments, which also include several animatronic components, allowing the realtime composition of whimsical ‘landscapes’ of both 'real' and 'virtual' media. Through subtle, non-didactic touch-sensitive interactivity the participant then has influence over both the 3D graphic imagery, the physical movements of the diorama and the 4.1 immersive soundscape, creating an uncanny blend of physical and virtual media. Five speakers positioned around the room deliver a rich interactive soundscape that responds both audibly and physically to interactions. VERSION 1, CONTEXT/THEORY: Finitude (Mallee: Time) is Version 1 of a series of presentations during 2012-14. This version has been inspired through a series of recent visits and residencies in the SW Victoria Mallee country. Further drawing on recent writings by post colonial author Paul Carter, the work is envisaged as an evolving ‘personal topography’ of place-discovery. By contrasting and melding readily available generalisations of the Mallee regions’ rational surfaces, climatic maps and ecological systems with what Carter calls “a fine capillary system of interconnected words, places, memories and sensations” generated through my own idiosyncratic research processes, Finitude (Mallee Time) invokes a “dark writing” of place through outside eyes - an approach that avoids concentration upon what 'everyone else knows', to instead imagine and develop a sense how things might be. This basis in re-imagining and re-invention becomes the vehicle for the work’s more fundamental intention - as a meditative re-imagination of 'time' (and region) as finite resources: Towards this end, every object, process and idea in the work is re-thought as having its own ‘time component’ or ‘residue’ that becomes deposited into our 'collective future'. Thought this way Finitude (Mallee Time) suggests the poverty of predominant images of time as ‘mechanism’ to instead envisage time as a plastic cyclical medium that we can each choose to ‘give to’ or ‘take away from’ our future. Put another way - time has become finitude.

The Remnant Emergency Artlab

The REMNANT/EMERGENCY Artlab was funded by the Australia Council InterArts ArtLab Program in 2010 and involves 22 months of rigorous research and experimentation in several countries. The process will be developed between a core transdisciplinary team of practicing media artists, designers and engineers where possible working in consultation and collaboration with local creatives at each venue. Our team asserts that today’s environmental crisis is underpinned by a deep cultural crisis - and so to get our ‘house in order’ we urgently need to create better and more powerful ‘images’ of what a ‘citizen-led’, sustainable world might be. This ArtLab’s core aim is therefore to begin to understand how to develop and create such ‘powerful images’.

Solo Show

Solo Show is a to-scale model Metro Arts’ gallery, in which it was exhibited. Set upon a timber frame, the model depicts a miniature ‘installation’ within the ‘space’: a foam block that obstructs one of the gallery’s walkways. Developed and produced for a group exhibition that explored the relationship between humour and art, this work explores and pokes fun at ideas of the institution, scale and the artist ego as well as communicating feelings of emergence, insecurity and hesitancy. The work was included in the group show 'Lean Towards Indifference!' at MetroArts, Brisbane, curated by art collective No Frills.

me as al, you as bobby, me as bobby, you as al

In ‘me as al, you as bobby, me as bobby, you as al’, appropriated footage is looped and supplemented with superimposed text, creating a scenario where Robert De Niro and Al Pacino endlessly stalk each other, with their readied-guns chased by hovering words. These titans of Hollywood screen acting represent opposing approaches to the construction of filmic identity, and as the text labels loosely adhere to one weapon and the next, the action on screen becomes an investigation of the subjective and objective potential within screen surrogate constructions of personalized identity. The work was included in the group show 'Vernacular Terrain' (curated by Lubi Thomas and Steven Danzig) for the Songzhuang Art Museum, Beijing.

Explosive Revelations

‘Explosive Revelations’ employs the device of the Hollywood-style explosion to expose the constructed and futile nature of the moving image. Pointless, impotent explosions bloom and fade, punctuating a non-existent narrative – they promise the spectacle of violence but destroy nothing and disappear without a trace. The video itself is sourced from a stock footage supplier that provides users with a selection of explosions that can be inserted into movies by masking out the background. However, the footage is not used as intended, leaving them instead as merely explosions erupting on top of a black background, fizzling out into non-existence. The work was included in the 2008 'Light in Winter' program at Federation Square, Melbourne, directed by Robyn Archer.

something 2.0

In ‘something 2.0’, a section of a Hollywood film is re-edited to include textual elements that appear as ‘Pinocchio-ish’ protrusions from the actors faces. As they sit in what appears to be an interview or therapy session, this re-editing and looping imposes a new fictionalized narrative upon the characters. The histrionic yet vague nature of the text, and its imperfect integration into the footage, can be read as both a comical imposition and a failed critical gesture, both speaking to the complications involved in the relationship of the artist and the fan as they engage with popular culture. Thw work was included in the group show 'Perfection' part of the Metro Arts Artistic Program 2008.

Top Ten Box Office Blockbusters of All Time

‘Top Ten Box Office Blockbusters in Dollars’, is an ongoing series of works that represent the production budgets and worldwide gross profits of the top ten grossing films of all time. By displaying this data on top of the full running time of each blockbuster, the viewer’s attention is drawn back and forth between the amassing dollar figures, and the original film’s highly polished presentation. In doing so, the work aims to provide a new opportunity to enjoy these immensely popular films with a new sense of value. The exhibition was selected for the Artistic Program at MetroArts, Brisbane in 2010

Illustrating fashion - Brisbane Square Library exhibition

Creative Practice exhibited at the Brisbane Square Library Illustrating Fashion exhibition. Accompanied works from acclaimed fashion labels, Easton Pearson Julie Tengdhal and Dogstar.

My mother is water, my father is wood

'my mother is water, my father is wood' was an installation comprised of two large cork discs mounted on the gallery floor and wall, overlaid with images of photographic and archival research evidence, and a turned wood sculptural object. It also included a short video work on a miniature screen embedded in the upright disc. The work explored the language of natural elements and the structure of genealogical research to discuss the Scandinavian history of Queensland and my own family. The work was selected by the directors of LEVEL ARI in Brisbane for inclusion in their 2011 exhibitions program.

Swimming but drowning

This single-channel digital video work documents a performative event, the disintegrative process as a drawing-object is progressively submerged within water. This work forms part of a series of video works examining ephemerality within art and the iconoclastic impulse. This is informed by Gustav Metzger’s conceptualisation of auto-destructive art (1959) as that which contains within itself an agent, which automatically leads to its destruction. Here, the ontological moment of the work corresponds to its demise, investigating a symbiotic relationship between creation and destruction. It addresses the phenomenology and epistemology of destruction in art when presented by the artist, as both a process and an ethical position. The work was included in the group show 'The Construct', curated by Kris Carlon for Artworkers' Residency and Exhibition Project 2006 at the State Library of Queensland.

ArtConnexions series

The exhibition consists of a series of 9 large-scale cotton rag prints, printed from digital files, and a sound and picture animation on DVD composed of drawings, sound, analogue and digital photographs, and Super 8 footage. The exhibition represents the artist’s experience of Singapore during her residency. Source imagery was gathered from photographs taken at the Bukit Brown abandoned Chinese Cemetery in Singapore, and Australian native gardens in Parkville Melbourne. Historical sources include re-photographed Singapore 19th and early 20th century postcard images. The works use analogue, hand-drawn and digital imaging, still and animated, to explore the digital interface’s ability to combine mixed media. This practice stems from the digital imaging practice of layering, using various media editing software. The work is innovative in that it stretches the idea of the layer composition in a single image by setting each layer into motion using animation techniques. This creates a multitude of permutations and combinations as the two layers move in different rhythmic patterns. The work also represents an innovative collaboration between the photographic practitioner and a sound composer, Duncan King-Smith, who designed sound for the animation based on concepts of trance, repetition and abstraction. As part of the Art ConneXions program, the work travelled to numerous international venues including: Space 217 Singapore, RMIT Gallery Melbourne, National Museum Jakarta, Vietnam Fine Arts Museum Hanoi, and ifa (Institut fur Auslandsbeziehungen) Gallery in both Stuttgart and Berlin.

Citizen Coombs Wins!

Citizen Coombs Wins! appears to be a standard arcade game placed within the gallery. Mortal Kombat is displayed on the screen inviting the viewer to press play. The ‘player’ selects their character and awaits the commencement of the game; at first move however, the player dies – sound and text informs them that ‘Citizen Coombs Wins!’. By altering the expected play of the game, this work exploring notions of play, control, the institution and expectation. This work seeks to invite, engage and repel the viewer in order to question, critique and play with the role of the artist and the viewer within the context of the institution. The work was included in the international group show 'Ceci n'est pas une Casino!', curated by Kevin Muhlen and Jo Kox for the Casino Luxembourg and later toured to Villa Merkel, Esslingen, Germany.

Athletes series

The researcher was invited to photograph athletes in the lead-up to the 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne. She photographed four indigenous athletes, to produce a series of four large-scale cotton rag prints, 1 meter x 1 meter, printed onto photorag paper from digital files. “My photographic practice can be described as both political and spiritual, in the sense that as an Aboriginal Indigenous artist I take stock of the rationalising effect of the technologies I use, and create work that evokes nature and spirit. My methods often involve re-photographing or digitally re-working landscape photographs and adding historical or cultural icons of significance. Working with Indigenous athletes has been an honour and a pleasure. I admire the athletes’ passion and dedication to their chosen sport, and above all their humility, which seems a trait somewhat in contrast to what it takes to attain the highest levels of achievement. Indigenous athletes are wonderful role models for all Australians, and in making creative work that places their luminary presence with the land, I am aligning sportspeople with a deep sense of nature and spirit.” – Leah King-Smith. These works were commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery for the exhibition FLASH: Australian Athletes in Focus. The exhibition was a significant element in Melbourne2006 Festival, the cultural festival of the Commonwealth Games. The exhibition was prominently reviewed in Portrait: Magazine of Australian and International Portraiture and was subsequently remounted at Old Parliament House, Canberra (15 July to 12 November, 2006). One image was used for the front cover of Art Monthly, (March 2006).