WED 15 SEP | SWELL FRINGE | MEDIUM RARE: LAURIE OXENFORD & GRACE DEWAR IN CONVERSATION WITH DR CHRIS BENNIE | $11

| MEET OUR PANELISTS |

Dr Chris Bennie

Chris Bennie graduated with a Doctorate of Visual Arts in 2009 from Griffith University where he was awarded a Griffith University Post Graduate Scholarship to research Authenticity, Video Art, and the Spectacle of Contemporary Existence. He has participated in major group exhibitions in prestigious venues nationally and internationally including Oceans From Here, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (2018); Ecstasy: Baroque and Beyond, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2017); New Psychedelia, University of Queensland Art Museum, Brisbane (2011); Photo LA, Los Angeles (2010); Revolutions – Forms That Turn, Biennale of Sydney (2008); Contemporary Australia: optimism, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2008); and +Plus Factors, Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2006).

Solo exhibitions include: The Citizens, a Clutch Collective project, Park Genie, Bowen Hills (2017); Mood Swings, Griffith University Pop Gallery, Brisbane (2017); On Top, In Front, Gold Coast City Gallery (2017); When Will We Ever be Forever Together, Alaska Projects, Sydney (2015); and Control Rooms + The Waves, PhotoAccess, Canberra (2015). His work has won The Gold Coast Art Prize (2012); The Clayton Utz Art Prize (2014); and both the 2013 and 2019 SWELL Sculpture Festival, Currumbin Beach, Queensland.

Laurie Oxenford and Grace Dewar

Laurie Oxenford and Grace Dewar’s collaborative practice considers the critical thresholds and potentials of public space. Their site-specific and durational projects are approached with a shared spatial aesthetic that is inherently concerned with process, performance and conceptual practices. Often realised via psycho-geography and social practice, they respond to site and situation as part of the work. Within their interdisciplinary practices, they navigate shared interests in material hierarchies, value and chance as principles for developing critical dialogue.

‘DISCOUNT POOL SUPPLIES’ is an investigation and intervention of the quasi-industrial locality of The WALLS Art Space, Miami. Initiated as a chance encounter with Discount Pool Supplies (open Mon–Fri 8:30am–12:30pm), the first informal interaction and subsequent meetings occurred with no preconceived outcome, but an interest in the everyday systems, intentions and material archives existing in the shop space.

Situated in the expanded field of public art, ‘DISCOUNT POOL SUPPLIES’ was developed as a series of actions and exchanges; presenting new understandings and spatial inquiries. Acknowledging public space as a “participatory landscape”, their object-based experiments position public space as a studio, interaction as form, and active participation as activism. Images, video and objects offer an incomplete archive of the live interactions between the artists and their unknowing collaborators.

This project was developed for Medium Rare via The WALLS Art Space, Gold Coast, Australia.

Rae Saheli

Rae Saheli can’t recall a time when she wasn’t making art. It has been a part of her life from a very young age. Born in rural Victoria, she studied year 12 TOP Tertiary Orientated Program – Visual Arts and was mentored by Dick Bishop, a well-known local artist who taught her traditional painting techniques. Following High School, Rae majored in Painting and Life Drawing at TAFE Central Gippsland, Yallourn Campus. She also completed a Library Technician’s course working full time at Monash University Library.

With Dick’s passing, Rae moved to Melbourne to start a family. In 2009 she moved to the Gold Coast where she currently resides. With her family’s support and encouragement, she resumed her art training full time completing in 2020 an Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts at TAFE NSW, Murwillumbah Campus, majoring in painting and printmaking.

Her formal training belies Rae’s current art making process. No longer interested in the application of paint to render the world in expressive or colourful ways, Rae’s work is unique in that is made using a 12-gauge shot gun. That’s right, Rae shoots her work! In a process that favours chance, chaos and randomness over any sense of pictorial order, Rae’s curiously beautiful pieces are the result of a woman with a shotgun, stoically aiming it, at various gun ranges around the country, towards pieces of canvas, plywood, aluminium and just about anything else you can think of that might look good pelted at high velocity.

The results of this intriguing process have been exhibited in many group exhibitions including: AIRspace, Metro Arts 2020; (The Feel), Tweed Regional Art Gallery; (Gauge) and Northern Rivers Community Gallery; (Gauge). In early 2020 Rae was an inaugural participant in Retreat – a Walls Art Space emerging artist intensive – in which its directors Rebecca Ross and Chris Bennie oversaw and guided Rae and three other local artists develop work during an eight-week residency in the Walls Art Space.

While Rae has explored three dimensional forms in her art before, this year’s SWELL Sculpture Festival will mark a major leap in scale for her sculptural practice and allow for significantly more shooting to take place.