Through their works, Sydney-based artists Jess Olivieri and Hayley Forward with the Parachutes for Ladies investigate the social and cultural factors that influence how we act in public space. Spanning live-art, performance, sound, video, dance and installation, they have created four new site-responsive works for Primavera 2011. Featuring the MCA’s Visitor Service Officers (VSOs) these new works explore the changes to the Museum’s territory and the movements of its staff.
Hiromi Tango
Hiromi Tango’s autobiographical approach to art-making is open and generous. Collaborative and site-specific, her practice embraces a number of paradoxes that emerge from an ongoing process of self analysis; an intimately recorded dialogue with her physical body, thoughts and emotions. In her work, Hiromi often temporarily lives in small in-between spaces or homemade enclosures within the public realm and invites participation. She allows these dwellings to evolve organically over the course of her projects through the interventions of friends, community groups, other artists and passersby.
Image: Hiromi Tango Hiromi Hotel – Untangle you 2009 installation view, Fresh Cut, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane Image courtesy and © the artist Photo credit Craig Walsh. Hiromi Tango Behind the Door 2010 collaborative project with local artists and public installation view, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts Image courtesy and © the artist Photograph: Sarah Rowbottam. Hiromi Tango Garden 2010 collaborative project with local artists, Carclew Youth Art, Adelaide Railway Station Image courtesy and © the artist Photograph: Craig Walsh
Keg de Souza
Keg de Souza is a Sydney based artist working across many disciplines and has published hand-bound books, prints, screen prints, as well as played a prominent role in the MCA’s much loved Zine Fair. For Primavera 2011, she has taken inspiration from her architectural background and investigates spatial politics in built environments. Her inflatable art work, made from re-used umbrella skins, references Buckminster Fuller’s 1960’s utopian architecture and investigates the notion of public and private space.
Image: Keg de Souza Whatever Floats Your Boat 2010 performance, Sydney Harbour, 2010 Image courtesy and © the artist Photograph: Arlene TextaQueen
Brown Council
Brown Council is collaboration between Sydney-based artists Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore, Kelly Doley and Diana Smith. Spanning gallery and stage, and blurring distinctions between high and popular culture, Brown Council’s work draws on the legacies of visual and performance art, street theatre, amateur magic, vaudeville, and stand-up comedy. For Primavera 2011, they present two new video works that use simple DIY costumes and sets to contemplate issues of authenticity and liveness in a performance context.
Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe
Tessa Zettel & Karl Khoe are Sydney-based artists, whose projects span a range of media including sculpture, photography, drawing, printmaking and installation, and are often site-responsive and participatory. At the heart of their practice is the idea that as a society we must create more sustainable ways of living in city environments ‘if we are to extend our finite time as a species’.
Eric Bridgeman
Brisbane-based artist Eric Bridgeman uses slapstick and satire to playfully subvert conventional representations of race, gender and sexuality. Encompassing a range of media including performance, photography, installation, sculpture and video, his work is informed by his dual Australian and Papuan New Guinean heritage, and his experiences of moving between these two very different cultures. His work draws on cultural references specific to his family’s ancestral tribal home in the Highlands of PNG, as well as images from Australia, popular culture and the mass media.
Image: Eric Bridgeman Lik Lik Mary Muffatt 2008 from the series The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules 2008―09 photographic inkjet print Image courtesy and © the artist. Eric Bridgemann Baron Cockyer (God of Football) 2009 from the series The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules 2008 / 2009, photographic inkjet print Image courtesy and © the artist. Eric Bridgeman Big Head Turner 2009
from the series The Sport and Fair Play of Aussie Rules 2008―09 photographic inkjet print Image courtesy and © the artist
Tom O’Hern
The primal urge to draw is central to Hobart-based artist Tom O’Hern, whose work incorporates street art, zines, murals, pencil and ink drawing, painting, and installation. Tom works mostly in black-and-white, creating fantastical worlds inhabited by loners and misfits, hairy skeletons, monsters and wild-eyed beasts.
Rebecca Baumann
Rebecca Baumann’s mesmerising works create relationships between colour, sound and movement to evoke shifting intensities of emotion Spanning a range of media including kinetic sculpture, photography, performance and installation, her practice is a celebration of the transient moment. The psychology of happiness and the pursuit of this elusive emotional state are central explorations in her work.