LOL
Outer Space at Metro Arts
Hailey Atkins, Joseph Breikers, Kate Land, Erika Scott
8 April — 18 April 2021
Opening Reception: Saturday 10 April, 4-6pm
Kate Land, Podium Finish, 2020
When you can’t laugh, you cry. LOL features artists that respond to the concept ‘Lol’ - oft used as an acronym for ‘laugh out loud’ but is also sometimes misread as ‘lots of love’. A lighthearted exhibition featuring emerging and mid-career artists who explore humour and love through emotions of frustration, elation, repulsion and power. Featuring Joseph Breikers, Kate Land, Erika Scott and Hailey Atkins. Curated by Sarah Werkmeister.
Metro Arts
97 Boundary St
West End QLD
(map here)
metroarts.com.au
NOTE: Metro Arts is wheelchair accessible.
Hailey Atkins
Hailey is a Brisbane based sculptural artist. She graduated at Queensland College of Art in 2016 (Bachelor of Fine Art, Hons – Class I) and has since exhibited frequently in Queensland, as well as interstate (Sydney, Hobart) and internationally (Utrecht, Rotterdam, NL) and is currently represented by har.art in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Hailey was selected as a finalist of Churchie Emerging Art Prize in 2018 and was co-founded Wreckers Artspace in Brisbane.
haileyatkins.com
Joseph Breikers
At the core of Joseph Breikers' practice is an interest in humour and language and their ability to engage with areas of slippage and overlap. Over the past ten years conceptual interests have formed and informed the core ideology of his practice, with an increasing emphasis on intertextuality and post-medium forms. He is drawn to these modes for their capacity to establish an expanded field of discursive research and creative potential. Breikers' work often develops from his engagement with text and literary theory and his concern with the tropes of the carnival. He is interested in using humour and language to find new ways of engaging with systems of belief and hierarchy, and the assumptions and conventions that are formed through these systems of presupposed knowledge. Joseph holds a Master of Arts (Research) from the Queensland University of Technology and has shown both nationally and internationally.
josephbreikers.com
Kate Land
Kate Land is a Meanjin (Brisbane) based artist whose multidisciplinary practice celebrates the absurdity of the everyday. Her practice engages primarily with themes around success, and seeks to upend conventional perceptions of legitimacy and accomplishment, especially within the framework of making art. As she untangles her own anxiety, Kate uses humour as a device to reframe conversations about mental health. Her work leans on the pathos inherent to the collective experience of failure, and the absurd futility of fear. Wordplay is the cornerstone of Kate’s approach, pairing witticisms with imagery to create visual puns that are at once personal and universal. Her sculptural and installation works feature a cache of found, manufactured and assembled materials - zeroing in on the absurdity of the mundane object. She is particularly fascinated by the potential of metaphor, blurring the line between literal and figurative. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Queensland University of Technology.
latekand.com
Erika Scott
Erika Scott (b. 1987) is a Brisbane-based artist who predominantly works in sculpture and installation. Scott’s visual language unfolds through a variety of media, often reassembling and modifying discarded household objects, furniture, and popular culture debris—resulting in a maximalist and often overwhelming DIY bricolage. The environments and constructions that Scott creates encourage an unsettling ambivalence, part attraction and repulsion, anxiety and relaxation. Her recent solo exhibitions include On Fire, 2021 (IMA, Brisbane); The Dutch Aquarium, 2020 (Outer Space, Brisbane); The Barnacle Lovers, 2017 (Wreckers ARI, Brisbane); and Pestorius Sweeney House Exhibition, 2016 (Pestorius Projects, Brisbane). Scott completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (2010). Scott is also the founding director of local ARI The Soylent Spot and the workshop and residency coordinator for Sculptors Queensland.
erikajscott.blogspot.com
Sarah Werkmeister
Sarah Werkmeister is a freelance writer, editor, researcher, broadcaster and curator based between Melbourne and Brisbane. She has written extensively and worked with L'Internationale Online to develop publications around the environment (Ecologising Museums, 2016) and feminism (Feminisms, 2018), and has co-edited a chapter on the 13th Istanbul Biennial in I Can't Work Like This: A reader on recent boycotts and contemporary art (2017). She is currently the Assistant Curator at QUT Art Museum, and has worked with Shepparton Art Museum, Public Art Melbourne, Next Wave, YIRRAMBOI Festival, the Emerging Writers Festival, Blak & Bright, BIRRARANGGA Film Festival, The Thousands, 4ZZZ and many more. She's currently on the Darebin Art & Heritage Advisory Committee, the Outer Space board, and the Bus Projects Artistic Advisory Committee. Her research interests encompass representations of nationhood in public art collections, conceptions of public space, and the climate. She holds a Masters of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne.
Exhibition documentation: Charlie Hillhouse