The IMA is pleased to present work by Brisbane artist Liam O’Brien in The Green Room from the 12 – 20 December. The opening event is Saturday, 12 December at 2 pm, O’Brien will be showing his recent work, Study of the Gaze (2014). This recent work explores the extent to which this charged bodily interaction is affected by screen-based mediation. One-at-a-time, the audience is invited to interact with the work, to consider the difference between looking and engaging, and the nature of their everyday interactions.
This is the final of three presentations by artists who have been shortlisted for the 2015 Jeremy Hynes Award, which is given biannually by the IMA to an emerging experimental Queensland artist in honour of the late Jeremy Hynes. This year, the shortlisted artists are Clark Beaumont, Catherine or Kate, and Liam O’Brien. Each of these artists have been invited to present and existing work in The Green Room.
Graduating from the Queensland College of Art (Griffith University) with 1st class honours in 2010, Liam O’Brien has spent the last 5 years developing his practice through a number of solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia and abroad, including Channels: Australian Video Art Festival (2013), SafARI (2014), and GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art (2015). During this time O’Brien has been a finalist in The Churchie National Emerging Art Award (2012), the John Fries Memorial Prize (2013), the Fishers Ghost Art Award (2015), and has been named a recipient of the Art & Australia/Credit Suisse Private Banking Contemporary Art Award (2013/14) and the Clayton Utz Art Award (2015). In 2013 he was commissioned for Artbank’s Performutations video series, curated by Dr. Daniel Mudie Cunningham. Also in 2013, he was selected for the Sister-City Artist Residency at 501 Artspace, Chongqing, China. In 2014 O’Brien held his first solo exhibition with a commercial gallery, Surrogates at Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art (Sydney, NSW). O’Brien’s work is featured in a number of public and private collections throughout Australia, including the Queensland Art Gallery Collection (Brisbane, QLD), the University of Queensland Art Collection (Brisbane, QLD), the Griffith University Art Collection (Brisbane, QLD), the Allens Arthur Robinson Art Collection (Sydney, NSW), and the Artbank Collection (Sydney, NSW).
