statement

My work concerns studio interactions between artists and models, with a particular focus on life drawing operations. The environment of life drawing should be one in which infection, death, appetite, proximity, transmission, and action become dominant considerations. Furthermore, conventional considerations — decorum, distance, silence, stasis, antisepsis, and passivity — should be discarded. This reformed space of life drawing is favourable to a number of different theatrical and performative strategies, including the deployment of zombies. The pure-body/blank body of the zombie finds its analogue in the anti-activist performance of nudity in the drawing studio. The removal and destruction of clothing is apocalyptic (apokaluptein — to uncover or reveal). The symbolic rhetoric of zombiism manifests in carnivalesque costume (masks and corsets and belts which spill gore) and the gesture of yawning. Yawning (gaping) is a contagious vector that distends the mouth (the site of infection). The connection between yawning and contagion is still being investigated, with theories ranging from social allegiance to empathy to a functional method of cooling the brain. A key point of reference for this work is an obscure and sinister drawing by Degas of a young woman yawning in which she seems to inserting her right hand into her wide mouth. Her facial expression is not typical of yawning (as in Messerschmidt or Ducreux) but more akin to a calm consumption. She is consistently re-enacted and referenced in the drawings. Notions of good taste (confection) and bad taste (infection) are paramount. Utilising the zombie in the drawing studio (the d-zombie) is part of a broad strategy of restructuring the fundamental characteristics, expectations, behaviours, methods and relationships of drawing from life.

bio

born: 1971, Syracuse, New York

education

Griffith University, PhD, 2012
Excelsior College, MA, 2006
Pratt Institute, BFA, 1993

selected awards/honors

William Platz Gallery dedicated at Southwest University of Visual Arts, 2008

selected publications

Studio Research Journal, "Posing Zombies: Life Drawing, Performance and Technology", Brisbane: Octivium Press, 2015
International Drawing Annual 8 (INDA 8), "Drawing Live", Cincinnati, Ohio: Manifest Press, 2014
Studio Research Journal, "The Mutated Model", Brisbane: Octivium Press, 2011
Neo-Symbolism: Bridges to the Unknown at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, "Contemporary portrait historié", Chicago,Illinois: UIMA, 2010.

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Bosz Gallery, Young Woman Yawning, Brisbane, Australia, 2015
Webb Gallery, Rigged and Framed, Brisbane, Australia, 2012
POP Gallery, Rigging Portraits, Brisbane, Australia, 2011
College Gallery, The Counterfactual Portrait, Brisbane, Australia, 2009

selected group shows

Ice Box Gallery, Body Politic, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2015
Art and About Festival, Arena Calcetto: Team Superdistant,Sydney, Australia 2013
13th Venice International Architecture Biennale, Venice, Italy, 2012
POP Gallery, Drawn to Experience, Brisbane, Australia, 2013
CRANE Arts Centre, Australia Felix, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2011