4 – 19 DECEMBER 2016
10 Junction Street Marrickville NSW 2204 Australia | airspaceprojects.com| sally@airspaceprojects.com | +61 438 020 661 | Open Thursday – Friday 11.00 – 6.00pm and Saturdays 11.00 – 5.00pm the first 3 weeks of each month. Check website for changes and events.
Catalogue
Alana Wesley
Requiem, 2015, ice, water, plastic fountain, sound, 150 x 200 x 700cm.
NFS
‘Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things’
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Loss is a universal human experience. This year, many of those around me lost people in various capacities. Working from this realisation, I have developed a work, which called upon contributors to share their stories of loss: everything from the songs they associate with their experiences, to the objects, which trigger their memories. As healing is often prompted by the act of sharing, I have asked each person to read someone else’s story. As the discourse continues, the ice gradually thaws and we can grieve over what has been lost, yet also appreciate and connect with what we have found as a result of our experiences.
Alana Wesley works across the fields of performance and installation. Often compared to theatre sets, Alana’s work aims to spatially beckon the audience to explore and interact, and viscerally trigger emotional states and experiences.
Alana is currently finishing her Bachelors of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design. Nationally, she has exhibited at spaces including MOP Projects (2011), Paper Planes Gallery (2011), COFA Space (2013) and NOX Festival (2015) . She has also exhibited internationally at The Seabright Space, London (2012), The Jon Wood Studio, New York (2015) and the Hornell Art Walk, New York (2015).
Alice Furber
More, 2015, ceramic, 32 x 20 x 20cm.
$400
The expectation for instant gratification is said to be a characteristic of our age. Desires, issues and thoughts are packaged up and presented in easy-to-swallow formats for our convenient use and disposal. But somehow our hunger and our thirst can never be satisfied. We are always left wanting more.
Alice is a sculpture and ceramic artist interested in exploring themes of interactivity, materiality and form in her works. She enjoys exploring the sculptural and pragmatic languages of clay, and their relationships with other materials and processes.
Amy Claire Mills
Amy Claire Mills & Emma Bartik, Eruption Interruption, 2015, performance and projection installations, mixed media, dimensions variable. Edition of 4.
$350 each
Recognition for personal achievements are experienced as fleeting moments. This work is an exploration of the trajectory into the spotlight of success and the diminishing residue of the exhilaration, as the spotlight eventually fades away onto someone else.
Amy Mills (b. 1988, Sydney, Australia) is a performance artist currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design, majoring in Sculpture, Performance and Installation. Previously she has worked in photographic design, and in 2011 she graduated from the Canberra Institute of Technology with Bachelor of Design. To date she has exhibited works of performance and photography in galleries and artist-run spaces in both Sydney and Canberra. Amy recently co-curated an exhibition held at Cipher Gallery in Marrickville. Amy focuses on the body and its primary functions through performance. She uses her work as a tool to deal with her incurable illness and the frustrations she has felt through her own body’s limitations.
Anastassia Kouxenko
Crime and Punishment, 2015, polymer clay, acrylics, pins, chair, cellophane, 70 x 45 x 45cm.
$190
Perfume (no image), 2015, polymer clay, acrylics, alum crystals, glass, 10 x 10 x 10cm.
$160
In the same way that Gothic-Romance literature flourished alongside the Industrial Revolution, my work is the result of experiencing intense love and fascination for the beauty of nature, juxtaposed with growing up in a working town. Crime and Punishment and Perfume are part of an on-going project that combines elements of both worlds in a way that is simultaneously abject and delicate; mesmerising and macabre.
Anastassia is a practising artist, currently studying a Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design. The bulk of her work takes the form of specialised small-sculpture that focuses on blending intricacy and elevated attention to detail with concepts of spatiality, surreality, the natural and the macabre.
Growing up in a working suburb her access to the natural world was limited, and she developed an obsession for it through documentaries and written works of both fiction and non-fiction. Her work has always showcased animals and nature in various forms. Currently her practice revolves around exploring the concept of Gothicism in suburban spaces and the role of nature in its manifestation. She believes that there is an inherent link between separation from nature and the development of a romance with it; one that is inclined to turn dark and warped while retaining an alluring aesthetic that borders on the abject, as exemplified by the blossoming of Gothic Romance alongside the Industrial Revolution.
Angela Yu
CLINT, 2015, photographs, 8.41 x 5.94cm.
POA
In my body of work I am challenging the stigma around female genitals and sexuality. Researching the etymology of the word ‘cunt’, I was intrigued by the various roots the word had. One in particular that struck me was from a Germanic root where the word was used in last names and street names. Within these names ‘cunt’ roughly translated to topographical features such as a gully/valley and a ‘cleft where a stream ran through it’. It really interested me how a word that once had beautiful connotations became a vulgar, frowned upon word. Through the portrait series my body of work aims to challenge the connotations around the word and redefine it.
Angela Yu is a Sydney-based artist studying at UNSW Art & Design. Her body of work explores gender and sexual politics in contemporary society through cross-media ranging from photography, performance, sculpture and video art. Inspired by works of Cindy Sherman and Tracey Emin, Yu comments and challenges femininity and it’s relationship to hegemonic politics.
Yu is part of the 99cents collective and has previously exhibited in NOX Night Sculpture Walk with her work Mirrored (2015). Currently, she is collaborating with a boutique ceramics designer to create decals for their Forrest Girl collection. Yu is also working with Sydney-based publication Apathetic to create a body of work called Let Me Grow (2015) for their second biannual exhibition.
Austin Kennedy Bates
Excalibur, 2015, plaster, silicone and found materials, 40 x 50 x 20cm.
$14,995
I hate art galleries, but I love cheese and wine. I love cheese and wine so much I make art, for art galleries, for you to look at while you eat cheese and drink wine, because you love cheese and wine too. While we enjoy our cheese and wine, and my art, we talk out our arses. This piece is one such arse, and for a small fee it can be yours.
Behind the cheeky front, Austin Kennedy Bates is a multidisciplinary fine artist (f-artist) with the desire (but very little means) to change the world. Austin is at the vanguard rearguard of the contemporary f-art world, making cheap jokes but expensive art.
Bailee Lobb
Anxiety Study No.1: Sinking, wood, salt dough, plastic, mixed textiles, 130 x 110 x 160cm.
$2500
Anxiety Study No. 1: Sinking explores the intense connection between the mind and the body by encouraging the audience to reconnect with the full range of sensations available to them through touch. Many people do not really feel the objects they touch on a day-to-day basis and therefore do not truly connect with them. There is no revelry in the grass beneath your feet, or the softness of their towel. The feel of these objects gets lost in the rush of busy lives, of stress, and anxiety because we are not wholly present. The work borrows ideas from mindfulness and meditation, aiming to still the mind and ground it within the body by stimulation the sense of touch, focusing on unexpected and overwhelming sensations that can be experienced from head to toe.
Bailee Lobb (b 1989, New Zealand) examines the commonalities of human experiences to open a critical dialogue about perception, privilege and difference through her works. She frequently works with tactile and sensuous materials and encourages the audience to interact directly with the works, thus actively participating in the discussion. Bailee is currently finishing her third year of a Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design and has a special interest in textiles, sculpture, performance and installation. Her works have been featured in the Kudos Emerging Artist Award for the past two years, and she recently co-curated the emerging artist show Waitlisted. Bailee is a founding member of the all-women feminist art collective Show Us Your Teeth, who create performance art that aims to challenge societal norms and expectations.
Barbara Wren
Accumulated Silent Things, 2015, copper wire, silk, ceramics and audio, 600 x 600 x 180cm.
POA
Accumulated Silent Things explores the cycle of abuse that occurs with script-like predictability within domestic violence relationships from one generation to the next.
Barbara Wren works from the premise that, regardless of gender or sexual preference, those who are adult survivors (and indeed the perpetrators) of domestic violence have, in the majority of cases, experienced abuse and trauma as children. Silence (generated by fear), shame and guilt lead to immobilisation and enable these cycles of violence to be perpetuated. In this work Wren aims to evoke a recognition of the viewer’s own ‘accumulated silent things’, even though for many these ‘silences’ will be relative minor. She believes that once we are able to identify with the root cause of a source of pain and suffering in the so-called ‘other’ we can approach the problem with compassion and insight. By doing so we begin to have an honest dialogue with ourselves and each other, allowing cycles of blame and denial to be broken and creating a space where we as a society can begin a healing process. Given the health of family units is inextricably woven into the fabric of our larger social, corporate and political structures, until we heal as individuals, families and communities we cannot hope to see the change we want to see in the world. The healing of the planet herself awaits our recognition that we are one.
Barbara Wren was born in Australia and lives in Sydney. She is an emerging artist and is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design, majoring in sculpture, performance and installation. Wren has a diverse practice across various media and has often addressed environmental, feminist and psycho-social issues. Her work often explores concepts inspired by Ervin Laszlo and Ken Wilber’s integral theory perspective where science, particularly quantum physics, meets eastern mysticism and other streams of philosophy. Wren’s methodology is based on the premise that a particular idea requires the utilisation of particular media, contexts and technologies.
Catherine Thickett
Letters from those close, 2015, black Bemsilk lining, PVC piping, wire, black cotton thread, 31” screen and wall mount, headphones, mobile phone, dimensions variable. 50 x 80 x 130cm.
NFS
Letters from those close is a video-based installation stemming from my research into gendered violence, specifically domestic violence and sexual abuse against women in Australia. The piece is an uncomfortable exploration into the experiences of those closest to me, and a depiction of my emotional responses and reactions to this knowledge. I hope to educate my audience in relation to the vast quantity of abuse cases against women in this country, and to inspire action against it, as well as an empathetic, emotive, sympathetic and utterly justified response.
Catherine Thickett was born in Rotherham, England in 1994. Thickett’s works are predominantly multi-sensory, interactive performances and installations of an uncomfortable and forcibly educative nature. Thickett is currently completing the third year of her Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design in Sydney. She has most recently shown in exhibitions at AD Space in Paddington, Monster Mouse in Marrickville and Randwick Environmental Park. Thickett is a member of the recently established collective 99 cents. Her individual practice is currently exploring issues surrounding gendered violence in Australia, most specifically issues of domestic violence and sexual assault against women.
Celina Jayne
Local Singles in Your Area, 2015, video, dimensions variable.
NFS
The internet has become a platform for individuals to live a second life; a place where people go to fulfil fantasies, and seek relationships. Through the cloak of anonymity, you can pretend to be whoever or whatever you want – even if it differs from real life. It’s become a huge platform for people to express themselves sexually, with the creation of chatrooms and webcam girl sites that scream “SEXY SINGLES READY TO CHAT IN YOUR AREA!”. Statements within this space are neither true nor false, but are rather non-statements existing in a non-space. They seem to come from the space itself, as opposed to another human on the other end.
Within my work, I aim to explore the notion of sexuality on the internet, through projecting myself in the style of webcam girls, and incorporating text, similar to pornographic advertising, within this video. Accompanying the video work is an automated chatbot service that the audience can communicate with via the installation and their smartphone. I intend to further blur the lines of reality and false reality on the internet through the combination of these two works, creating at once a ‘real’ person and space that can be interacted with as well as a fabricated being within this space that appears to exist within the computers itself.
Celina Jayne is an up-and-coming installation and performance artist who is intrigued by the idea of realities – both false and perceived – as well as the human psychology associated with these notions. She has been featured in a few local exhibitions, and is currently studying at UNSW Art & Design.
Claudia Luhur
18+21*gasp* I get five, 2015, photography, 100 x 160cm.
NFS
This work explores the evolving nature of sibling relationships, through the artist and her sister. The work is made up of screenshots from the artist’s own personal videos of when she and her sister are within the same frame. This work also explores concepts of time, memory and identity through the medium of photography.
Claudia Luhur (left) with her sister Rebecca
Claudia works within the photographic medium to explore concepts of time, identity and relationships. She uses photography as an expanded field with other media such as textiles, performance, painting, sculpture and installation.
Daniel Pervuhin
Untitled (the lover), 2015, photomedia, 70.7 x 100cm.
POA
The Lover series (2015) attempts to blur the lines of people’s perception. A multi-layered work, from first photographing through a marred lens to blurring in postproduction. Through this process I aim to challenge the viewer’s perspective and preconceptions of sexuality and intimacy.
Daniel Pervuhin is a Sydney-based artist who works across media, including film, photography, sculpture and installation. He has studied design, film, photography, and is currently completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at UNSW Art & Design. Commenting on issues of identity, he evaluates the individual and couple. Investigating ideas of sexuality, intimacy and anxiety, he aims to bring awareness and acceptance of ‘taboo’ topics.
Doug Schofield
See in Here? Hands Made This (Process Peep-Hole), 2015, acrylic and spray on expanding foam on found objects, dimensions variable.
POA
Since the boom of the Industrial Revolution humans have been growing ever distant from the Mother we call Nature, with the commonly accepted idea of ‘humans vs. nature’ rather than humans of Nature (‘Something in this book is true’, Frissell, 1997). Through the use of reductionist landscape painting, a focus is drawn to the organic landscape and presented in multiple perspectives (macro, topographical, and micro) simultaneously. In this way, the painting acts to facilitate a reconnection of people with their organic roots.
Douglas Schofield is currently studying at UNSW Art & Design, completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a major in painting and minor in printmaking. Douglas has recently shown his work in group shows at Monster Mouse Studios, Create or Die, and Gaffa.
Dylan Nicolas
SPOILT, 2015, metal, plastic, fabric, paint, 150 x 100cm.
$2000
Dylan Nicolas is a multidisciplinary Sydney-based artist currently undertaking his Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at UNSW Art & Design. As his art practice evolves, Dylan continues to investigate identity and perception through lenses both private and public while his work often challenges the foundations of art practice itself. Fun, smart and sexy.
E.L. Heffernan
E.L. Heffernan, Baudot Study 1, 2015, mixed media, 110 x 190 x 15cm
POA
Elle van Uden & Ben Allen
His and Hers, 2015, copper, polycarbonate, timber, motor, 40 x 40 x 170cm
POA
His and Hers meditates illusions of movement between the straight line and the circle. Two separate entities rotate delicately in the same rhythm and time at fixed, opposite points on a circle. This work explores the creative and intimate relationship between collaborative artists in the meditation of ideas, material, discussion and making.
Elle van Uden and Ben Allen are collaborative artists working across sculpture and installation. With backgrounds in fine arts and architecture, their practice considers geometries and mechanism in the creation of cross-disciplinary art, design and construction. The focus of their work is on people, spatiality, function and aesthetic sensibilities.
Emily Kaar
Sedimentary Life, 2015, sandstone, soil, wood, 45 x 75 cm
NFS
Just as rock forms are constantly evolving, changing, eroding and shifting in nature so are humans. Sandstone is created from tiny grains of sand and minerals that, when joined together, make a strong, unique, and evolving structure. It reminds us that something substantial and powerful can come from the tiniest of grains. Humans are similar to sandstone in that every experience and interaction with the world leaves an impact, moulding and shaping us. Just like sandstone, no two people are alike but there are a lot of us and sometimes you have to look hard to see the differences. Sandstone represents a summation of a person’s life experiences. Our contexts can help make us strong, like a grand sandstone landscape, but life can also, at times. feel like an eroding force that wears us down. Like sandstone, humans can be both strong and very fragile. Rocks change very slowly over time, just as humanity is constantly evolving.
Emily Kaar was born in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, in 1992 and works mainly in detailed pencil drawings, and sculptural works. Emily has just completed her final year in a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in sculpture, performance and installation at UNSW Art & Design, and will be pursuing Honours in 2016. Emily carves plaster, Hebel and sandstone but is also strongly influenced by found materials. Her ideas emerge from her own life experiences and are a response to changes in nature, demonstrating evolution and growth.
In 2011 she exhibited in Art Express with her work Water is the way we live. She has since been involved many smaller exhibitions at galleries such as Monster Mouse Gallery and COFA space. She also recently exhibited in the NOX night sculpture walk at the Randwick Environmental Park. In 2014 she performed in Australian artist Mel O’Callaghan’s mixed media installation and performance work Parade, at the 19th Sydney Biennale on Cockatoo Island and volunteers at the Hawkesbury Regional Art Gallery.
Emma Bartik
Amy Claire Mills & Emma Bartik, Eruption Interruption, 2015, performance and projection installations, mixed media, dimensions variable. Edition of 4.
$350 each
Recognition for personal achievements are experienced as fleeting moments. This work is an exploration of excelled trajectory into the spotlight of success and the diminishing residue of the exhilaration, as the spotlight eventually fades away on to someone else.
In addition to being a visual artist, Emma Bartik is also a professional makeup and special effects artist; her daily life is filled with conflicting views about the value of the body and flesh as a commodity. After initially pursuing an education in the field of dramatic arts, Emma’s work, which is now primarily based in sculpture and performed installation, combines both the sensory manipulation of space with transformative aesthetics. A combination of skills formed as prosthetic makeup artist, sculptor and performer. After completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design in 2016, Emma will continue to focus on explorations of the human body that utilise action to invoke reaction.
Holly Sheehan
Disquietude, 2015, video and audio, 43 x 73 cm
NFS
Disquietude is a self-portrait exploring emotional discomfort, an encapsulation of simmering irritability and the inability to calm oneself in moments inexplicably stressful. It is an investigation of one’s detachment from reason or reality. There’s no dulling of feeling and no crescendo. Disquietude is a continuous, monotonous loop.
Holly Sheehan was born in Sydney, Australia in 1992. Holly works predominantly in sculpture, photography and video, but often includes audio in her installations. Over the past two years, her practice has largely been centred on video portraiture exploring intricacies of the mind. Holly is due to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design at the end of 2015. She also has interests in theatre and film, and has assisted with set design for shows at New Theatre.
Katherine Bennett
A Case for National Action, 2015, video still, 55 x 35cm.
NFS
With an interest in Australia’s policies surrounding immigration and refugees, the work A Case for National Action takes a look at the monolithic ideals that are projected to the limited and selected people that are allowed to migrant to Australia. The video creates a parody of the capitalist environment in which biased media portrayals of refugees accounts for a large majority of the discussion on the topic, as well as allowing a visualisation of the vulnerable left in the hands of those in power.
Katherine Bennett is a Sydney-based artist currently completing a double degree in Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design. With a penchant for installation work, Katherine is interested in delving into the social conceptions of the gendered world.
Kate Bobis
For Her, 2015, mixed media, 67 x 46cm.
NFS
The work explores and critiques products designed for women that enforce gendered stereotypes. Women incur a pink tax simply by purchasing items that meet their basic needs, the only difference with their male counterpart being the colour. What is the purpose of pink products for women? Are they empowering, or are they just continuing to reinforcing sexism?
Kate Bobis, a multidisciplinary artist working across performance and textiles, is currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design. She was part of Herself the Experiment, Pact Theatre’s 2014 Young Artist Ensemble Program. Most recently she exhibited as part of Nox (Randwick Council), Waitlisted (Create or Die), and performed as Agave in The Bacchae (Joan Sutherland).
Maxime Thompson
Sleep Easy, 2015, installation/performance: liquor land enviro bags, thread, hot water bottle, warm water, pillow, 100 x 100cm
NFS
This is a personal and autobiographical work which reflects the experiences of living with someone who suffers from alcoholism. It consists of hand sewn pyjamas and a hot water bottle cover constructed from the many Liquorland bags found around the house. The bags are fabricated to carry the alcohol, and I aim to suggest excess in a symbolic yet subtle way by removing the bags from their usual context. The work depicts the warmth and normality of alcohol in the household, how it is used as a blanket. Being in close proximity to its effects, I am the one that wears it.
Maxine Thompson is in third year at UNSW Art & Design, undertaking a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and SPI. Maxime is an installation artist working with ready-made objects to create sensory and interactive artworks. She has recently been experimenting with text works as well as textiles and faux fur for their visual and tactile qualities. She is interested in the way text instructs and impacts on the perspective of the viewer while exploring both personal and political themes. Her artworks ultimately aim to challenge traditional understandings of an object or material. Maxime is interested in working with communities then continuing on to do her Master of Fine Arts and PhD.
Mitchell Thomas
Dying of Thirst, 2015, ceramics, lab equipment, sump oil, 15 x 50 x 20cm
$1000
As humanity searches for an economically viable energy resource the environmental effects on the land remains a low priority. In this work I explore Camden Valley as a region that has become highly concentrated with coal seam gas wells. As we shift our focus from one resource to another the pressure of time means the damage we directly impose on the land is largely dismissed.
Mitchell Thomas is currently undertaking a BFA (Honours) at UNSW Art & Design, majoring in the Sculpture, Performance and Installation studio. Previous exhibitions include: Finalist with Between Places in ROGAP Rockdale, Tempest, Fluid and Tick at A&D Space. Recently, Mitchell exhibited in Hidden at Rookwood Cemetery for which his installation, Refraction, received a commendation. He is also one half of the collective Sloppy Joe with Rachel Levine. Together they exhibited at the NOX night time sculpture walk in Randwick. Sloppy Joe seeks to obscure the everyday observation and works primarily in the realm of Sculptural Out-of-Placements.
Monica Rudhar
Space Between Us, 2015, mixed media, dimensions variable.
POA
Distance Between Us is a work that explores notions of touch, intimacy and emotional connections between people. The sculptures mark the space between the bodies that once existed. As the physical bodies are absent, the audience is challenged to see past the physical forms into a realm that addresses the emotional depiction of space.
Monica Rudhar produces performance-based works, sculptures and installations that are reflective of emotional states. She delves into the human psyche in order to make intangible feelings and experiences tangible, visible and tactile. Transforming philosophical ideas into physical embodiments, she gives the audience an insight into her mind and personal experiences such as her vulnerabilities, struggles, relationships with others and the world around her. These ideas are further enhanced by Monica’s hybrid cultural heritage, which has given her a unique perspective and insight into the human condition.
Natalie Duncan
Memory Jugs, 2015, Ceramic, Copper Wire, dimensions: Memory Jug I 73 x 31 x 31cm; Memory Jug II 63 x 35 x 35cm, Memory Jug III 63 x 17 x 17cm, Memory Jug IV 44 x 19 x 19cm, Memory Jug V, 100 x 50 x 50cm.
Memory Jug I: SOLD, Memory Jug II: $675, Memory Jug III: $530, Memory Jug IV: $250, Memory Jug V: POA
Memory Jugs is a series of five large ceramic vessels that are decorated with memories from the last three years. Sometimes the memory is a random comment from someone on a bus, or it could be a friends rant, and the occasional soul destroying moment is there as well. Just things people say or do. The Memory Jugs are designed to be displayed together to form a vernacular.
In another life I was a qualified combat photographer in the army: recording human moments has always interested me. I was drawn to ceramics at university and have since developed a most unhealthy obsession with this medium. I am intrigued by the memory that surrounds ceramics, how the clay records the artists hand, how the minerals and molecules of the clay align uniquely every time so that each vessel is different.
Paloma Grace Maine
He Loves Me Not, 2015, video, performance & installation, bathtub and Australian native wattle, dimensions variable.
NFS
He Loves Me Not came from my need to create an ethereal and sacred space that accommodates the lucid and whimsical nature of the feminine. A ‘Hyper-Feminine Space’, it is situated within the natural environment for the purpose of its occupant/performer to think and just be. The repetition of stripping the Australian wattle plant of its flower, as a means of filling up the bathtub, is both tedious and meditative whilst the act is as equally pathetic as it is resilient. The work references the game of French origin by which the player alternates the contemplation of the phrases ‘He/She loves me’ and ‘He/She loves me not’. The purpose of the game is to reveal the truth of whether the object of ones affection loves them or not.
Paloma Grace Maine is a performance and installation artist based in Sydney. Centralised around her fetish for salmon pink, the installations are a means of expressing love and distress for what she likes to call ‘Hyper-Feminine Spaces’. Each work is a set-like depiction of the fantastical world inside a female’s head and re-imagined as if simultaneously existing inside and outside of the body. The spaces are an escape, or a sacred space that is as neurotic as women’s beauty standards and as feminine and natural as the grooming rituals.
Rachel Levine
If you stay very still, you won’t fall through the holes, 2015, flour, salt, sugar, water, dye, plaster, carpet, fabric, dimensions variable.
POA
… It was all a dream.They hated it when we concluded our creative writing pieces like that, the teachers, the tutors. But it was. It was all a dream. It is. I am asleep and I am convinced of that, and so this can be just what it is, without being questioned, without being understood, without being concluded. I cannot be woken up, please to not attempt to wake me. Because I am not alone in this dream. You are here too.
I once had a dream (another dream, not the one we are in now) that I was asleep in the middle of a gallery. The floor was white. I was surrounded by little black alarm clocks with white faces and they were all sounding, at once, their repetitions of screeches slightly staggered out of time. This is the only sound more irritating than that of one alarm tone. Multiple alarm tones, overlapping-verlapping-lapping-ping, yes, hello?
My practice involves experimentation with materials mostly found in the domestic setting, combined with traditional sculptural materials to create somewhat absurd objects and scenes that often portray fragmented narratives of the everyday as they filter through to the subconscious…
Rebecca Masters
Six Sites, 2015, ceramic, photo-luminescent pigment, U.V light, dimensions variable.
POA
My work not only responds to environmental issues, but also deals with the absurdist philosophical view that there is a conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any.
Ranging from the totally inappropriate to the everyday mundane my subject matter currently deals with the seriousness of environmental sustainability (or lack thereof) and the role that I personally have in this real life performance. As a consumer I struggle with feelings of deep guilt from my contribution to the demise of our planet. I am intrigued by process and progress, repetition of my failures, and polished end products.
Born in New Zealand, Rebecca Masters is a Sydney-based artist and current Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) student studying sculpture, performance, and installation at UNSW Art & Design. Her current practice is one of experimentation with her immediate incorporeal environment.
Romy Seven Fox
Radio Organ, 2015, performance installation, dimensions variable
NFS
Diverting from the artist’s usual take on the body through the lens of gender, Radio Organ examines the body in relation to disease and the damage that is invisible to the general public. Focusing on senses outside of sight, the artist invites you to explore their damage stomach through a layered soundscape – with their stomach and heartbeat being broadcast and remixed live.
Romy Seven Fox is a performance/installation artist based in Sydney. She is currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNSW Art & Design. Her work primarily deals with her relationship with her body as a transwoman. Her work is political, queer and often quite noisy, processing frustration, angst and confusion. Despite this she lists The X-Files as her primary influence (Punk Rock is a close second).
Scarlett Steven
Untitled (detail), 2015, pigmented wax, glass, dimensions variable
NFS
Scarlett Steven works primarily across sculpture and installation and makes work that deals with the female body and notions of femininity, with a particular interest in feelings of mistrust, betrayal, alienation, and shame. Tending to be quite sexually charged, her work draws heavily on the abject as a way of relocating us in our real bodies. She seeks to slash the mediated ‘sealed’ body we are so often presented with and renegotiate a more corporeal understanding of our own biologies. She often works with wax and other castable translucent materials, light, interactive electronics, and bodily materials, in particular hair and animal blood.
Scarlett Steven is a Sydney-based artist currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at UNSW Art & Design. After initially having started her practice in landscape painting, she is now majoring in sculpture and installation. Since commencing her studies, she has spent time volunteering as a creative mentor for disadvantaged Sydney youths, as well as being involved in a number of groups shows and prizes. Earlier this year she held her first solo painting show, Melaleuca, and was a Co-ordinator for Randwick Council’s Nox Night Sculpture Walk. There, she exhibited as a part of the 99c collective, as well as more recently traveling to Melbourne as a finalist in Feck’s erotic art prize.
Torrie Torrie & Rebecca Masters
Success, 2015, self adhesive red dots, book, table, dimensions variable.
POA
Success is a collaboration between two artists nearing the completion of their Fine Arts degree at UNSW Art & Design. Torrie Torrie and Rebecca Masters came together when they both experienced total exhaustion from the processes of creative thinking. Naturally the artists began to feel daunted by the realities of what is expected upon completion of their degrees. These expectations feed off clichéd notions of artists’ success: whether they are able to sell work, receive grants in order to make their work, or to be represented by a gallery.
Success is a work portraying the humorous side to the anxieties of being a ‘successful artist’.
Torrie Torrie is an interdisciplinary artist based in Sydney. Her work crosses over a multitude of media including collage, video, animation, and performance; she explores the notions of gender, sexuality and the blurred spaces in-between. A key theme in her work is the depiction of matters of the heart, often through satire and dark humour.
New Zealand born Rebecca Masters is a Sydney-based artist and current Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) student studying Sculpture, Performance, and Installation at The UNSW Art & Design. Her current practice is one of experimentation with her immediate incorporeal environment.
Zeyeon (Kel Henderson)
Coming Out (attempt #1) from the Diana Ross series, 2015, video still, dimensions variable.
POA
Harnessing the irony of spectacle, the series examines the heteronormative cultural ritual of ‘coming out’ and it’s homophobic implications. While looking at the practice’s cyclical, repetitive nature for participants, the works are concerned with binaries of ‘the pack’ and ‘the other’ that are formed, the effects the ritual has on the social psyche in queer and heterosexual communities and the mainstream’s impositions for constant declarations of the private and inconsequential by these ‘others’.
Zeyeon is an emerging artist based in Sydney, Australia, holding a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from UNSW Art & Design. Primarily using performance, video, installation and sculpture, the artist deals with the political through personal experience, joining discourses in sexuality, poverty, nuances and constructs of gender (more specifically hyper-masculinity and the degradation of the feminine) and trauma.
AirSpace Projects 2014-2017 