XANTHE DOBBIE

"Still Life Triptych"

 Reflecting on our current collective experience of isolation, ‘Still Life Triptych’ is composed of objects sourced exclusively from the Artist’s bedroom. Our private spaces have become the entire universe - isolated kingdoms of the self where we connect through the windows of our devices. Going against the short attention span emphasis of TikTok, these minute-long loops intentionally dwell in the moment, changing mildly, only to return to the beginning.

They are portraits of the artist as filtered through their possessions - simultaneously excessive and banal, curated and haphazard, meditative and annoying. Applying the logic of collage used broadly in Dobbie’s expanded practice, ‘Still Life Triptych’ is a fanatical ode to the strange priorities of isolation: self-care, binge watching, and perpetual masturbation.

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Xanthe Dobbie is an Australian new media artist and filmmaker. Working across on- and offline modes of making, Dobbie’s practice aims to capture the experience of contemporaneity as reflected through queer and feminist ideologies. Drawing on humour, pop, sex, history and iconography, they develop shrines to a post-truth era.

 Reflecting on our current collective experience of isolation, ‘Still Life Triptych’ is composed of objects sourced exclusively from the Artist’s bedroom. Our private spaces have become the entire universe - isolated kingdoms of the self where we connect through the windows of our devices. Going against the short attention span emphasis of TikTok, these minute-long loops intentionally dwell in the moment, changing mildly, only to return to the beginning.

They are portraits of the artist as filtered through their possessions - simultaneously excessive and banal, curated and haphazard, meditative and annoying. Applying the logic of collage used broadly in Dobbie’s expanded practice, ‘Still Life Triptych’ is a fanatical ode to the strange priorities of isolation: self-care, binge watching, and perpetual masturbation.

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Xanthe Dobbie is an Australian new media artist and filmmaker. Working across on- and offline modes of making, Dobbie’s practice aims to capture the experience of contemporaneity as reflected through queer and feminist ideologies. Drawing on humour, pop, sex, history and iconography, they develop shrines to a post-truth era.

John A Douglas is a Sydney-based interdisciplinary artist working across video, animation, VR, performance, live art installation, photomedia, sound and objects. Since 2011, his practice has investigated his ongoing experience of chronic illness through scientific and collaborative, immersive performance approaches. Douglas offers a unique and personal perspective as both artist and patient that intersects with biomedical science, clinical treatment and the human and emotional experience of a renal transplant patient. Douglas’ work seeks to map a psychological geography of the patient-subject as a parallel world of existence in which he cycles between places of healing, regimentation, wellness and suffering. Douglas identifies as an artist with non-visible disability and is a descendant of the Walbunja people of the Yuin Nation.

Willurai Kirkbright is a Wiradjuri woman based in the Blue Mountains with tribal roots in Northern NSW. A multi-disciplinary artist, having studied film at Eora and with a history in performing arts, she identifies fore mostly as an installation artist due to it having the least amount of conventions. Kirkbright believes in art as activism, breaking conventions and community engagement. She is an educator and facilitator, focused on truth telling and empowering disadvantaged minorities. Growing up in the city and in the bush and carrying conflicting bloodlines she explores the complexities of living between worlds. She delves into the uncomfortable and essential corners of the human psyche. Highly conceptual and immersive, her work often explores issues of identity, gender, colonialism, displacement and interconnected histories.

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JOHN A DOUGLAS & WILLURAI KIRKBRIGHT (AU)

CAL HARPER (AUS)

"Bedroomartist.biz"

Harper has created queer TikTok’s fusing humour and Non-Binary realness to create light hearted content tis stereotypically loved, with subliminal messages. These messages may be fleeting, but highly omnipresent. Within TikTok’s editing process, you get 0.5 second video opportunities, which Cal has used to throw these messages in between their lip sync extravaganza’s, Fitness videos, Life Hacks, DIY's, and Reality TV parodies. 

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Cal  Harper works with notions around LGBT culture, and combines discourse around reality and online life to create dialogue around the disparate differences of communication IRL vs URL. Primarily working with text, video and performance, Harper travels to varied destinations of contrasting political values toward LGBT citizens, and internalises locals opinions and his personal experiences on acceptance and daily life. The amalgamation of this collected experiential information and research data informs the medium and personal responses to experiences within differing contexts. Harper holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Monash University in Caulfield, Australia, and a Master of Fine Arts from Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden.

KATE McGUINNESS (AUS)

I made some instructional videos to email to my friends to educate them about stuff.

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Kate McGuinness is not an artist she is a person who lives in Sydney and makes little videos. She is obsessed with using her body to express herself. Her work explores themes of will power and what it means to be a free thinker in contemporary society.

DANNI PARADISO (AUS)

When I was binging through TikTok I noticed a trend called “I kissed my best friend”. Essentially these people film themselves springing a kiss on their long platonic friend against the track "Death Bed" by Powfu feat. Beabadoobee. I have created a reaction video to the TikTok trend with a montage of non-consensual 80s movie kisses such as Blade Runner, Hans Solo and Sixteen Candles.

Danni Paradiso is a Sydney-based screen and performance artist. In 2020 she graduated Sydney College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours), majoring in critical studies and Screen Art. 

LAURA HYUNJHEE KIM (USA)

Laura Hyunjhee Kim (b.1987, Palo Alto, CA, USA) is a Korean-American multimedia artist who contemplates and reimagines digitally constructed on/offline (non)human experiences. ​Kim received a B.S. in Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and M.F.A. from the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute. She is a Ph.D. Candidate in Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance (IAWP) at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information who works with the TECHNE Lab, Media Archaeology Lab, and the ATLAS BTU Lab. She is also a Digital Art Instructor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Art and Art History Department and a 2017-2019 HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory) Scholar Fellow. Kim resides in the U.S. and frequents South Korea.

EVAN CONFOS (AUS)

"PUBLIC/PRIVATE"

PUBLIC/PRIVATE, was made for a viewpoints assessment for my third year at WAAPA (current). I explored the emotional journey of travelling at this time. The anxiety, the coldness. Its reminiscent of a country ruled by a dictator. I was expecting to see armed guards, maintaining the social distancing rules. Through juxtaposition of shots of nature and shots of infrastructure mimics this anxiety inside. Tasting freedom, but feeling trapped.

JESSICA GOEHRING 

(USA)

Jessica Goehring (b.1983 NY lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.) makes animated works that are both acidic and humorous, combining personal narratives, art historical references and internet culture to explore our digital world. 

Recently the algorithm on Instagram has been feeding me TikTok videos of Justin Bieber dancing. This led me down a Belieberhole of watching his live stories on Instagram which featured him casually chatting with fans and some of his friends like Patrick Schwarzenegger.

I found watching this shared digital intimacy with strangers compelling especially during these times of self-isolation. I’m obsessed with multi-layered veils and screens; the information we pick up from and through them in all their shape shifting technological forms.The dancing videos on Tik Tok are hard to look away from and are particularly fascinating because the viewer becomes the phone, the dancers are always in a position of performance for the screen.

MARCELLA HO (AUS)

"DOMESTICATED MEDITATION"

Domesticated Meditation pushes the absurdity of the domesticity while being in a meditative state. Cleaning has been a coping mechanism for anxiety sufferers as the repetitive behaviour gives a sense of control over a situation that is beyond their power. Anxiety has heightened during the uncertainty caused by Covid-19 while we are isolating in our homes. Much like AMSR, the sound of the vacuum cleaner drowns into a meditative white noise which matches the hazy, flow state of the video. 

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Born and based in Sydney, Marcella Ho is a visual artist whose practice examines digital culture and the politics of the female image. Digital manipulation is the core of her practice through the mediums of moving image and photography, reflecting the anxiety surrounding the digital space and the female image. Boundaries are imposed in her process to challenge her perfectionism and as a result, her aesthetic becomes a product of serendipitous mishaps.