aRtist in residency

2021/2022

Raisa Mclean

My work focuses on the shifting introspective and outward sides of social spaces. I create environments for people to interact within, and then harvest those interactions to create more works, particularly text based works. I feel like my work has become more relevant post-covid-lockdown as we relearn those interactions and how to exist in party spaces again.

I want to be able to capture this moment in time through writing but also provide spaces for people to reenter and explore post lockdown.

I would hope the way I share my own experiences through my art will help people feel less critical of their own experiences relearning how to exist in social spaces…

 
 

I was worried this might happen, 2021, 30 minutes Performance

In saying that, the work is not “lockdown art” -  my practice continues as it always has; harvesting moments and monumentalizing them through installation and smaller text based works.


 

Imprint of concrete on soft knees, sunk into the floor and spinning (working title), 2021, work in progress/installation – wire costume sculpture, timber platform, PVC, Chiffon


 
Flurries of work called a flight of ideas meshing to create a practice that is pathologised and saddled. Or maybe it’s a fake nail left on the coffee table after a night out, caught in one of the wire sculptures and ripped off. There’s a violence to the sculptures, as pretty as they are, they cut, catch and enclose the body, preparing it for consumption by an audience. My work explores power - or maybe a delusion of it - social power, sexual power, the power of the seductress and especially the power of being able to manoeuvre my way into a gallery space. I like to imagine the works as a parasite, their shiny allure poisoning the curatorial brain. Saturated in too many ideas, events and feelings; characters with clashing storylines tied together by a mess of different mediums all bathed in sultry red light and maybe even a smoke machine for dramatic effect. The works are created zooming between the social space and the studio space (conveniently partially located in my garage). I use the social space as a testing ground, both for sculpture and performance. I build environments fresh out of the party, practice the power I preach, literally entangling my guests with my woven nets. Maybe the group creepily staring at us from the couch is a motivator, or the girl who told my friend she wasn’t like the others as she lit her cigarette stating “I look older than I am”. Vignettes of moments, captured in writing and installation - visual diss tracks and love songs that I secretly hope the subject understands. Little ceramics to be played with, dancers who’s stares you indulge in, caught on video and played back to you. Do you understand it yet?
— Raisa Mclean

Nicholas currie

Nicholas Currie is an artist, performer, and writer. Currie's practice is autobiographical and introspective to his cultural identity as an Indigenous and Anglo Saxon Australian man in contemporary society. Currie's work are large nonfigurative works based on gestural movements of the body used in dance, manual labour, and sport. Currie's figurative work in sculpture and painting is a mixture of masculine family imagery and still lives with the visual language in his paintings having elements of storytelling as well as invoking conversations surrounding self-identification.

 
 
 
 

Sol Fernandez

Sol Fernandez is a South Asian multidisciplinary storyteller and mother from South East Naarm. Her work explores the liminal spaces within her cultures, and the fluidity of age, relationships and sexuality. She resonates with young people who are making their own way in the world with a lot of heart, building things from the ground up. Sol is passionate about honest and layered representation of young black and brown women through storytelling. In the past few years, Sol’s daughter Blu Fernandez Lennon, who she collaborates on works and life with, has both solidified and loosened her practise.

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Tunnel of Delusion