Neon Oracle considers Hannah Brontë’s use of language as a form of resistance.
The exhibition presents over 30 text-based prints, banners, and textile works produced by the artist since 2012, alongside a series of new works made cooperatively with members of Twenty10, a NSW-based LGBTIQA+ service for young people aged 12-25.
Known for her videos, banners and large-scale installations, Hannah Brontë has created public works that are spirited affirmations of matriarchy and collective power. Brontë uses language—inspired by the nexus of poetry, visual art and music—as a form of public address driven by her personal, political and social contexts. Neon Oracle brings focus to her text-based works, situating the word-as-image as a means to inspire collective action in the face of ecological disaster and political change, affirm individual agency and create safe social space. Together, the works in Neon Oracle form a rallying cry for a liveable future and are united by Brontë’s spirit; playful, empathetic, and sincere.
About the artist
Hannah Brontë is an artist living and working on Yugambeh country, whose body of work explores the feminine experience, and its intersections with queerness, spirituality and motherhood journeys. She makes video, textiles, texts and soundscapes that present speculative dreamscapes and alternate universes through her own distinctive kaleidoscopic lens. Brontë has collaborated with spiritual and physical healers and is interested in applying these practices within art-making to expand connection and community. Brontë is also an established DJ, a trainee birthing doula and the Creatrix of Fempress – an ongoing series of immersive dance experiences that use the magic of the club to collectively imagine futures together.
Exhibition catalogue
Neon Oracle is accompanied by a publication with a fold-out poster, and texts by curator Stella Rose McDonald and Hannah Brontë.
Design by Daryl Prondoso.
Press
Art Guide, Neha Kale, 16 September 2022
Hannah Brontë on creating a world to live in.
She Speaks in Sculpture is an exhibition by Diana Baker Smith exploring the histories of Sydney’s built environment through the work of Australian-American sculptor Margel Hinder (1906-1995).
The project maps the extraordinary journey of Hinder’s sculpture Growth Forms, held in the UTS Art Collection, through a series of new works that explore the tension between public art and urban development in Sydney.
The exhibition includes a new video installation developed with cinematographer Gotaro Uematsu, choreographer Brooke Stamp, dancer Ivey Wawn, costume designer Leah Giblin, and musician Bree van Reyk, as well as a display of archival material related to Hinder’s work, supported through loans from the Art Gallery of NSW.
About the artist
Diana Baker Smith is an artist who works across moving image, performance, and text. Her practice combines archival research, collective memory, and fiction to explore the politics of art history. Her most recent works, examining the archive of the Australian artist and dancer Philippa Cullen (1950-75), have been presented at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Artspace in Sydney, and Contemporary Art Tasmania in Hobart. Diana is a founding member of the art collective Barbara Cleveland, and has worked collaboratively with artists Frances Barrett, Kate Blackmore, and Kelly Doley since 2007. Their series of video and performance works about the fictional feminist artist Barbara Cleveland have been presented at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, Art Gallery of NSW in Sydney, Hayward Gallery in London, and Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan. Diana holds a PhD from the University of NSW, where she is Lecturer in Fine Arts in the School of Art & Design.
Exhibition catalogue
She Speaks in Sculpture features a publication of film and production stills, with an introduction by curator Stella Rosa McDonald, and an essay by Denise Mimmocchi, Senior Curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of NSW.
Design by Daryl Prondoso.
Press
Memo Review, Amelia Wallin, 20 August 2022
A triumph of conservation and preservation, a story made clear by an artist doing art history.
Sidney McMahon is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculptural installation, video and performance, with an interest in the body, memory and feeling.
McMahon’s work brings together distinct cultural contexts, as well as social and economic systems to explore a personal queer narrative.
Maggot uses brain sensing wearable technology to read the users visual cortex and translate neural activity into real-time digital commands. Presented as a narrated ‘choose your own adventure’ three channel video, Maggot examines the act of looking, being looked at and being seen, and the relationship between our visual reality and our cognitive understanding.
About the artist
Sidney McMahon is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculptural installation, video and performance, with an interest in architecture, the body, memory and feeling. McMahon’s work brings together distinct cultural contexts, as well as social and economic systems to explore a personal queer narrative. They completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Southern Queensland in 2009, a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) at Sydney College of the Arts (USYD) in 2010, a Master of Art Curatorship at USYD in 2011 and a Master of Fine Arts at Sydney College of the Arts at USYD in 2015.
McMahon was an artist in residence at Parramatta Artists’ Studios from 2016 – 2018, and was awarded the 2017 Parramatta City Council Visual Arts Fellowship. In 2017 they completed a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, and Studio Voltaire, London. In 2018 they completed residencies at Wysing Arts Centre, UK, and a travelling residency between Kyoto and Tokyo organised by Move Arts Japan in collaboration with Asialink Arts. They have shown nationally and internationally in solo, group and curatorial projects in various galleries including, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (VIC), MOP Projects (NSW), Clearview Ltd (LDN), Open Source Gallery (NY), Auto Italia (LDN), Metro Arts (QLD), and Verge Gallery (NSW).
Exhibition catalogue
Maggot is extended by a publication with production images, an introduction by Sidney McMahon and an essay by Amelia Wallin.
Design by Daryl Prondoso.
Press
Memo Review, Nick Croggon, 11 June 2022
McMahon’s words hone in on the feeling of infatuation, of self and other crashing together in a euphoric mingling of warm bodies, fluids and breath.
Presented through the lens of virtual reality, can’t buy me love is an immersive experience that purports to sell the audience the intangibility of spiritual enlightenment.
Amala Groom is a Wiradyuri conceptual artist whose practice is informed and driven by First Nations epistemologies, ontologies, and methodologies. Andrew Burrell (UTS, DAB, School of Design) is a practice-based researcher and educator who investigates the relationship between human subjectivity and virtual and augmented environments.
Presented through the lens of virtual reality, can’t buy me love is an immersive experience that purports to sell the audience the intangibility of spiritual enlightenment. It brings “reality” into a space that is “unreal” and where the item that is for sale is one that cannot be bought.
About the artists
Amala Groom is a Wiradyuri conceptual artist whose practice, as the performance of her cultural sovereignty, is informed and driven by First Nations epistemologies, ontologies and methodologies. Her work, a form of passionate activism, presents acute and incisive commentary on contemporary socio-political issues. Articulated across diverse media, Groom’s work often subverts and unsettles western iconographies to enunciate Aboriginal stories, experiences and histories, and to interrogate and undermine the legacy of colonialism. Informed by extensive archival, legislative and first-person research, Groom’s work is socially engaged, speaking truth to take a stand against hypocrisy, prejudice, violence and injustice.
Andrew Burrell is a practice-based researcher and educator exploring virtual and digitally mediated environments as a site for the construction, experience, and exploration of memory as narrative. His process is one of worlding in virtual space—visualising otherwise unseen connections and entanglements. His ongoing research investigates the relationship between imagined and remembered narrative and how the multi-layered biological and technological encoding of human subjectivity may be portrayed within, and inform the design of, virtual environments. Burrell’s practice ranges from traditional academic research exploring the creative potential for virtual environments to visualise complex relationships in information to large scale projects (often collaborative) in virtual environments. This practice is always framed by an underlying concern for developing ethical and sustainable methods for engaging with current and emerging technologies during a global climate crisis. He is a Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication, faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology Sydney and lives and works on Gadigal Country.
Exhibition catalogue
can’t buy me love is extended by a publication with production images, an introduction by curator Stella Rosa McDonald, a conversation between artists Amala Groom and Andrew Burrell and an essay by Madeleine Collie.
Design by Daryl Prondoso.
Learning resource
Curated by Talia Smith, this exhibition considers how collections can be re-read in light of the present, challenged as an archive, and imagined anew.
Institutional art collections can be an archive of their past attitudes and future aspirations as well as a constellation of knowledges and times. As records of evolving tastes and values, collections are prone to inevitable gaps in knowledge, language and care.
I will tell you my story is a group exhibition that engages with works from UTS Art Collection by Tony Albert, Dion Beasley, Reg Campbell, Lex Dickson, Marian Drew, Vanessa Inkamala, Mabel Juli, Jumaadi, Sam Leach, Eun-Jong Lee, Guy Maestri, Sanné Mestrom, Henry Moore, Joycie Pitjarra Morton, Peter Newry, Sidney Nolan, William Pidgeon, Margaret Preston, Jude Rae, Kate Scardifield, Pamela Thalben-Ball, Christian Thompson, Judy Watson, Emma White and Xia Xiong. The exhibition considers how collections can be re-read in light of the present, challenged as an archive, and imagined anew. New commissions and loans by unrepresented artists bring new context to the UTS Art Collection, its history and future.
Exhibition catalogue
I will tell you my story is extended by a catalogue with documentation of the exhibition, a foreword by exhibition curator Talia Smith, an essay by Aneshka Mora and a commissioned poem by Jazz Money.
Design by Daryl Prondoso.
