SUPERCUT – Project 5 brings together the practices of Ben Tupas, Tay Haggarty, Laurie Oxenford, Sha Sarwari and Veople. Focused on the theme of ‘crossing’, the exhibition uses multimedia approaches to explore relationships between people and place.
Ben Tupas is a Filipino Australian artist based in Toowoomba, Queensland. His arts practice explores ideas of identity, storytelling and place using a mix of video, photography and sound. His current work explores the nuances of the migrant experience within the lens of the Filipino diaspora, and the relationship between the moving and painted image.
Tay Haggarty’s practice explores how reductive forms can be used as an open field to reflect upon personal and shared experience. These investigations take the form of collaborations, performances, videos, installations and sculpture. Haggarty uses industrial and ready-made materials that, when arranged within a space, heighten precarious elements through tension and balance. Their work is often minimal and site specific. Haggarty is one half of collaboration Parallel Park and were the winner of the 2019 Jeremy Hynes Award.
Laurie Oxenford is an early career artist, curator and public art producer. Her interdisciplinary spatial practice investigates the construction and potential of urban spaces and urban ecologies. Directed by materiality and site, she experiments at the intersection of everyday spatial practices such as architecture, construction, safety and maintenance. By acknowledging the temporality of all things Laurie’s work is inherently site-responsive and thrives on human and non-human exchange. Laurie is a current member of artist collective, PUBLIC PALACE, co-founded with Grace Dewar in 2021.
Sha Sarwari is a multidisciplinary visual artist born in Afghanistan and has been living in Australia for the past 18 years. Sha holds a diploma of Graphic Design from TAFE (2005), a Bachelor of Fine Art from the QCA Griffith University (2015), and Honours degree in Visual Arts from VCA Melbourne University (2018). In his work, Sarwari gives form to the notion of statelessness with a pointed reference to the political discourse around migration, identity, place and nationhood. His work speaks of a place exist between two worlds in which frustration is countered with hope, failure and resilience go hand in hand and compromises that are made in negotiation for survival. In 2018 he was awarded the Fiona Myer Award for excellence at VCA, Melbourne University, and a finalist in the Blacktown art prize. In 2017 he was awarded Most Critically Engaged Work at CCP Salon, Australian Centre for Photography.
Veople is the collaborative sound duo Jay and Julian. As a Musician, Industrial Designer and Contemporary Artist, Jays work examines the relationship between Techno, natural and human phenomena. Through this lens he proposes new ways of looking at the notions of self and its fragmentation within the contexts of nature and modern technological environments.
Image: Veople / An Inherent Force 2022 [detail] / digitally manipulated image / dimensions variable / © Veople
