Note to PHO2008 & DIS2601

siology is a collection of thoughts, inspirations and creative processes which have contributed to my practice in first, second, and now third year studying photomedia and art.

Monday 23 July 2012

Semester 2 Mock grant application


Aaaand I'm back! Kick-starting semester 2 with a mock grant application for overseas artist residency

Project description (limit 250 words):


As a part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2012, I've been collaborating with a group of young Melbournian artists on an exhibition and performance piece called 'Foreplay', which explores Melbourne's sex industry and the public perception of sex work. I am currently creating a video piece which uses documented interviews about privacy, intimacy, sex and the body with a variety of people, and disrupts these themes through a use of audio dubbing, unexpected video overlays and erratic cuts to the footage. Research into global sex trade laws has inspired me to compare Australia's sexual culture with that of Asian red-light districts, which are far less regulated than our own. In particular, I've taken an interest in Bangkok's Soi Cowboy district, where I intend to create a photographic sister work to 'Foreplay'. It's essential that the artwork does not become an oversimplified shock-tactic that exploits contentious sexual practice; this work will investigate intimacy and experience, and use sex as a platform for realising another idea of absence, and the empty spaces left over after an event has occurred. A residency in Bangkok, Thailand, will allow me to photograph these vacant spaces in Soi Cowboy, from outside of the usual context in which they are experienced. The neatly folded bedsheets of a dodgy Thai hotel room, for example, or a bar frequented by sex workers fully lit by fluorescent lighting. The final work will combine moving and still images, which question, with subtlety and humility, viewer assumptions, voyeuristic art and sexual clichés.