ARTISTs IN RESIDENCE | JANUARY 2016
JESSICA B. ANDERSON (USA)
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Part research, part design, part invention - my work navigates the boundarybetween mind and body through a recontextualized lens of science, medicine, and biologic phenomena. Reminiscent of laboratory investigations, my invented scenarios answer questions with questions and provoke participatory explorations of the individual self.  

Taking the position as neither a skeptic nor a promoter, my research examines the role of holistic healing practices in contemporary culture. I am interested in individual relationships within these mechanisms of health and provide viewers with opportunities to test their own boundaries of belief. Reframing practices such as a detoxifying footbath, a chi activation machine, and phenomenological exercises, my recontextualization of existing treatments heightens the tension of purpose, and provides viewers with neutral environments of investigation. 

Merging factual information with reinvented application allows me to expand the dialogue of cognitive occurrences. For instance, EMDR therapy asks patients to lean their head to the left to access thoughts and to lean their head to the right to access feelings and emotions. Redirecting this information, I then ask: Is there a discernible difference between these two cerebral directions when drawing a line? 
It is a question that can only be answered through experience, observation, and communally applied analytics. 

In my work, invitations for experience occur through demonstrative videos, interactive objects/devices, evocative statements of research, and performative exercises. Together, each of these installation elements create a multi-dimensional environment of investigative viewing, biologic questioning, and experiential answering. By repositioning scientifically grounded phenomena into the context of a gallery, information begins to transcend ratiocination and calls upon a physical conversation between mind, body, and personal experience.
NINA GILBERT (AUS)

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In my practice I use photography and moving image to look at image and its relationship with memory, consciousness, encounter and event. Using photographs and video that have objects, colours, actions or gestures, these are activated through a spatial arrangement of grid, planes or rhythms or in their peripheral view. Images come to suggest or can be associated with actions, gestures or common aesthetic examples of identity, culture, sport or lifestyle, achieved through formal arrangements. The arrangements prompt a questioning of personal associations with these objects and places or create new ones.