Brisbane-based artist Courtney Coombs invites you to participate in a guided evening of unlearning. Joined by artists Naomi Blacklock and Leena Reithmuller, Coombs is constructing a collective space for meditation and mediation.
This night of contemplation will be activated through gestures: Sit down, lay down, scream, whisper, read, and share with purpose. Each artist will invite you to reflect or participate by performing individual and collective physical actions to renegotiate our view on the world.
Register your attendance on Eventbrite here.
Biographies
Courtney Coombs is a Brisbane-based artist who works with photography, moving image, installation, performance, sculpture, and found objects. Their practice critiques the heteronormative, patriarchal structures of both the art world and society more broadly using strategies such as subjective voice, personal narrative, humour and metaphor, and re-appropriates the clichés of romantic love. Coombs is a founding Co-Director of the artist-run-initiatives and collectives, No Frills* (2008-2010) and LEVEL (2010-current). Coombs has exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions including: Casino Luxembourg (Luxembourg), Villa Merkel (Esslingen), Roji to Hito (Tokyo), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), Bus Projects (Melbourne), Artspace (Sydney), Performance Space (Sydney), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (Brisbane), QUT Art Museum (Brisbane), Boxcopy Contemporary Art Space (Brisbane) and Metro Arts (Brisbane).
Naomi Blacklock works primarily with sound installation, text works, and performance. Her work explores and examines mythologies of the witch archetype and harmful histories of gender and cultural identity. She is concerned with representations of the ‘witch’ as characterised by legal, religious and social institutions and the operation of this term by cultural minorities and LGBTQIA communities. She is a PhD candidate at QUT and is a Co-director of artist-run-initiative, CLUTCH Collective. She has exhibited and performed at institutions such as Metro Arts (Brisbane), Boxcopy Contemporary Artspace (Brisbane), PICA (Perth).
Leena Riethmuller is currently developing a queer, artist-led pedagogy with the purpose of holding space for people to study physical agency. They are a PhD candidate at UNSW Art & Design and graduated from Griffith University, Queensland College of Art in 2012. Riethmuller has exhibited and performed nationally, including at the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Boxcopy Contemporary Artspace (Brisbane), Bus Projects (Melbourne), Channels Festival (Melbourne), and with Liquid Architecture (Melbourne).
Image: Courtney Coombs, Cultivate Difference, 2016.
