No one here talks about class, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 40.6 cmx 50.8 cm.
We work, while robots make art, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 42cm x 59 cm.
This is my favourite paint brush, 2023, acrylic on paper, 42cm x 59 cm.
Documentation of an arts activist performance, 2021, Photography. The coal heads were produced by artist Moon beam supermarket.
Documentation of an arts activist performance, 2021, Photography. The coal heads were produced by artist Moon beam supermarket
Think of the most vulnerable person you know and vote in their interest, 2022, acrylic on canvas.
My parents don't care if I fail art, 2022, acrylic on paper, 42cm x 59 cm.
I don't want you're crusts,
2022, acrylic on paper, 42cm x 59 cm.
During the Covid lockdowns (2020) in Melbourne, Artists' Union, Nicholas Tammen and myself created a survey designed for the following purposes:
- to work towards collectivising the arts,
- to gain an understanding of the structural disadvantages of practicing as an artist in Australia,
- to establish what actions we are willing to take in order to address these issues and to share these findings broadly with artists, policy makers and the creative industry at large.
You can view a copy of the survey here.
Documentation of the workshop I facilitated as part of a residency at The Australian Tapestry workshop, Melbourne with Stephen Palmer, 2018.
During our residency and this workshop specifically, we invited guess speakers and artists to consider the precarious nature of artistic work, in relation to a range of conditions including wages, funding, parenthood, and time.
A working group of artists developed out of the Australian Tapestry workshop residency, along with a union representative called Artists' Union. This group was formed to create initiatives to collectivise the arts, including producing a reader of examples of collective action.
‘Union Banner’ 2019-2020 Cotton, dowelling, 175cm x 150cm With thanks to Hanna Tai, Remie Cibis and Will Foster.
This banner was created as part of a residency at The Australian Tapestry Workshop with Stephen Palmer and myself.
The banner does not represent an existent union– but speaks to the glaring absence of such a body; and is hence a call to arms to fellow artists and their allies.
This work and the residency was supported by the City of Port Phillip Cultural Development Fund.
Culture of Silence: arts parents accepting, rejecting or adapting to an unfriendly workplace.
2017- present.
Lizzy Sampson, Jessie Scott and I conducted two surveys – one of artists/arts workers who are primary carers about experiences of exclusion in the art world. The other asked galleries and institutions questions about how they accommodate artist parents. We aimed to gather research about the measures they were taking to accommodate artists/arts workers with families, and how artist parents were working around the restrictions both parenting, and the art world might be placing on their practices
ARTSLOG, 2018 -present.
ARTSLOG is an online database made by artists for artists. It logs artists’ experiences of working in the arts in Australia: the payment they receive, the negotiations they participate in and the institutions they engage with. Artists are invited to anonymously log stories to help improve transparency, accountability and working conditions in the sector.
The data collected here forms a picture of the arts sector as it is today from the point of view of artists. It gathers positive, neutral and negative experiences of artists in anecdotal and statistical form. In the process, the ways in which artistic practice is supported can be celebrated and benchmarked. Equally, the behaviours and beliefs that prevent artists’ work from being appropriately valued can be recognised within a systemic framework.
ARTSLOG was initially commissioned as part of State of the Union at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne, 24 July – 28 October 2018. The project is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.
Documentation of Children's March Protest, Melbourne 2021.
The Artists' Committee supported young people to organise a protest calling on the Australian government to stop indefinite detention on and off shore.
ARTISTS' COMMITTEE, 2017-
The Artists’ Committee makes collaborative public work around the intersection of ethics, money, politics and culture.
In 2017 the Artists’ Committee carried out a project that examines and highlights the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) connection with the immigration detention industry through its contract with Wilson Security. This project successfully ended the NGV’s commercial partnership with Wilson Security—a company known to have committed human rights abuses against asylum seekers and refugees—through a series of unsanctioned performative interventions.
The A-Z of Contemporary Art, episode 2 L-Z, on ABC TV Australia, presented by Andrew Frost (2013).
That takes balls, High definition video, 2019.
Cara, Edith, Eden, unnamed, Rhonda, Maddison, unnamed, Kym, unnamed, unnamed, unnamed, Bette, Michelle, Toyah, unnamed, Erana, Jacqueline, Dannyll, Kristie, unnamed, Gayle, Nicole, Julie, Beverley, Mara, Pamela, Fahima, Kristina, Dawn, Mary, unnamed, Samantha, Laa, Nicole, Michelle, Fatima, Amanda, Jan, Larissa, Eurydice, Qi, unnamed, Caroline, unnamed, unnamed, Karen, Cynda, Katrina, Debbie, unnamed, Cecilia, unnamed, Kay, Teah, unnamed, Simone, Katherine, Kerrie, unnamed, Marija, Le Ngoc, Sally, Radmila, Mary, Nowra, Nancy, Amelia, Antonia, Margaret.
Baby gestures, High definition video, 2015.
Baby gestures is a response to holding my sleeping child and attempting to remove him from my body without waking. Exploring the performative gestures undertaken trying not to disturb him, the video uses self portraiture performance video to enact the sometimes subtle and not so subtle bodily movements.
It is not until babies stop breastfeeding that they learn they are a separate entity from their mothers body. The video seeks to represent this split, as well as the individual entities in this close relationship.
Untitled # 1 (origins of turn taking), High definition video, 2015.
This work is a response to linguist David Crystal’s ideas on the origins of turn-taking in conversation to investigate how humans are socialised through learning a language whether foreign, patriarchal or mother tongue. The video draws on my experiences using and sharing language during pregnancy and with my newborn child. The initial idea was conceived while watching educational videos on a TV monitor in the Royal Women’s Hospital appointment waiting room.
Employing self-portraiture performance video, this work seeks to investigate the authority of language at the beginning of an infant’s life and how one learns to communicate through interactions with others before any words are spoken. Particular influence in this process and to the work itself includes researching and experiencing the origins of turn taking in language with my infant son.
The foreignness of language, High definition video, 2011.
This self portrait, performance video draws on my experience of learning Norwegian to explore how second language acquisition influences and disrupts identity.
Learning a language is about learning to participate in a culture. The process of learning a second tongue involves adapting and adjusting to knowing- or not knowing oneself in an unfamiliar language. The foreignness of language investigates the duality of having two languages sitting inside oneself and as a result having ones identity in a constant state of flux.
This video examines the tension of being caught between two languages represented by the experiences on the body as a metaphor for the repercussions on a sense of self.
Finding a voice, High definition video, 2012.
This video draws on my experiences of learning a second language. When I was first able to put a sentence together in a Norwegian and possibly understand a response, I knew the appropriate words to use, however I felt a silence every time I opened my mouth to try to speak. There was a momentary pause, a gap between my mind and body which made me question myself before I spoke. It was as if I was mentally silence, questioning and selecting the language, searching my brain for the right language to use. This disconnection was just as much physical as psychological. Maurice Merleau-Ponty explains that the body is the living container of our actions and that our thoughts and so our desires, actualise themselves into words in our throat through the articulation of sound (that which causes the voice folds to produce vibrations). This video explores such experiences on the body as a metaphor for the repercussions on ones sense of self; playing with the process of trying to own a foreign language.
Untitled # 1 (fish), Hight definition video, 2012.
Drawing on my experiences of living in Norway and learning Norwegian, is a self-portrait performance video that investigates a partner’s influence on learning a language through learning how to fillet a fish. Not simply exploring the idea of being lost in translation, it examines the interpretation and appropriation of words.
Attempting to follow the instructions of a voice off screen, I try to connect to the new language via the memory of an old one, which is represented by similarities in the sounds of certain words. The old words of my mother tongue (English) continue to resonate inside of me while I try to fit the new words (Norwegian) to my body through the process of responding to instructions. As a result, the real self emerges as an individual, existing in a liminal space, between two languages.
In this video, the use of the knife embodies a disconnection in the self when taking on another’s tongue and trying to fit it to one’s own desires, without having a history or experiences to draw on in the language. I know how to perform the task because of general knowledge and experience in my mother tongue, such as how to hold a knife. Nevertheless, I cannot follow the instructions correctly because I do not yet own the new language. For the foreign learner the knife also represents a kind of butchering of the language; what it can feel like when first trying to pronounce foreign words. In this instance the fish represents the Norwegian language; fish being a national cuisine and a large export of Norway. This video investigates the history of language inside my body, as well as the experience of a new one. The unsuccessful results of the lesson depicted in the video suggest defiance against the patriarchal directions. I continue in my own way filleting the fish, even though I am performing it incorrectly and end up destroying it.
The Language Between Us, High definition video, 2012.
This video draws on my ongoing interest in language acquisition. After living in Norway for the past few years and learning Norwegian for my partner, I am interested in the appropriation of words; how one can take a language (foreign, patriarchal or mother tongue) and make it one’s own. This self-portrait, performance video can be contextualised in relation to Russian psychoanalysis Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea that language only exists in the interaction with the other and it is within this exchange that meaning is created for the individual. The process of taking on another’s words can be difficult; it is through trial introjection and projection that the self emerges. The results of the process of acquiring a language have similar repercussions on a sense of self, which are played out on the body. This video is not a documentation of a performance, rather performance for the camera, exploring putting process on screen.
Untitled #1: Shohre, Persian, High definition video, 2014.
Drawing on personal encounters of both the artist and performative subject, this one-take video seeks to give a voice to experiences in language and migration.
Through migration, language for the individual is informed across ones personal history in their mother tongue as well as by the creation of a new sense of self, in a new language. While in society, language, for the speaker is where the social and political ramifications of social organisation are created and tested. Together, this creates a situation for the individual’s sense of self to be questioned.
This video aims to interrogate the complexities of language in a globalised world by portraying challenges in individual experiences using and sharing language.
Untitled # 2: Alda, Albanian, High definition video, 2014.
This video is part of a larger body of work, including Untitled #1 Shohre, Persian (2014). It is currently an ongoing series exploring language experiences. More to come!
Drawing on personal encounters of both the artist and performative subject, this one-take video seeks to give a voice to experiences in language and migration.
Through migration, language for the individual is informed across ones personal history in their mother tongue as well as by the creation of a new sense of self, in a new language. While in society, language, for the speaker is where the social and political ramifications of social organisation are created and tested. Together, this creates a situation for the individual’s sense of self to be questioned.
This video aims to interrogate the complexities of language in a globalised world by portraying challenges in individual experiences using and sharing language.
Post Baby Belly, High definition video, 2015.
This work is a response to my experiences telling people that I have a newborn baby. As soon as I mentioned it, they would try to take a sneak look at my stomach.