Liss LaFleur (USA), Kate Power (SA), Patricia Bordallo Dobildox (Mexico/USA), Katie West (WA/ VIC), Anna Dunnill (VIC)

20 May – 10 June 2017

Holding is Next to Knowing invites you to consider the political space that is occupied by feminine bodies. Featuring work by five artists drawing on queer, indigenous and immigrant histories, the proximal re lationship between bodies and societies is explored through careful studies of physical boundaries and the unveiling of quiet acts of resistance. Video, textile and sculptural works meditate upon identities won and definitions forced, through a series of embodied actions that mark the personal as territory to be won.

Patricia Bordallo Dibildox is a Mexican-born artist based in Kansas City, MO. She is currently focusing her creative attention towards world mindfulness as the catalyst of a modern identity. Bordallo Dibildox was the recipient of a 2015 Charlotte Street Foundation Rocket Grant as managing editor of Informality Blog (KC) and is a partner of Sight Review (NYC). She works at the School for Continuing + Professional Studies at the Kansas City Art Institute as Program Assistant as well as Digital Brand Manager and Marketing at Sex + Ice Cream (KC).

Katie West completed a Bachelor of Art (Visual Art) in 2009 at Edith Cowan University, and then went on to complete a second degree in Sociology at Murdoch University in 2013. West’s work is defined by a journey to reconnect with her heritage and the task of building her own sense of Aboriginality. It is about finding pieces dismantled by past government policies and the ongoing impacts of colonisation. This is coupled with an interest in the mechanisms that create social change, and a desire to challenge the myths revolving around Australia’s national identity. Anna Dunnill is an artist and writer from Perth, working in Melbourne. Her practice investigates the nature of language and communication, with forms including drawing, text, embroidery, small sculpture and tattoos. Her first solo exhibition was Notes Toward a Universal Language, held at Paper Mountain in July 2013. In addition to a solo art practice, Anna collaborates with fellow artist Renae Coles as Snapcat. She also writes and publishes critical articles, catalogue essays, short fiction and poems.

Liss LaFleur is a performance artist and media maker currently based in Texas. Incorporating feminism, body art, and video art, she produces objects as extensions of her own body to queer inherited roles tied to female ideologies. Working with a range of materials including digitally fabricated acrylic nails and teeth, traditional neon, embroidery, and video, she challenges a sense of self which is transformative, fluid, and often self-deprecating of her southern roots.

LaFleur’s work has been featured internationally in solo and juried exhibitions, film festivals, and on the web, including: the TATE Modern; Cannes Court Métrage; online with PBS and POV Digital; the Boston LGBT Film Festival; the Reykjavik Art Museum, and has been written about worldwide including in HYPERALLERGIC, Media N, and by CICA Gallery in South Korea. A new series of work is also featured in the upcoming 2016/ 2017 Queer Biennial. She is currently an Assistant Professor of New Media Art at the University of North Texas where she is Program Coordinator and teaches courses in media and performance.

Kate Power is an artist and writer based in Adelaide. Her practice embraces video, performance, textiles, sculpture and installation to investigate coexistence and enforced social constructions that can complicate the way people relate to one another. She performs micro moments that occur between people with an emphasis on the humorous outcomes of navigating socially acceptable behaviour. These ideas in turn form a framework to consider loneliness, dysfunction, uncertainty and suppressed desire. Through a lens of queer and feminist theories, Power considers modes of generating knowledge through everyday experiences and making processes.

Power graduated with first class Honours from the South Australian School of Art. She has been awarded the Constance Gordon-Johnson Sculpture and Installation Prize. Power has exhibited at BLINDSIDE (VIC); CACSA Project Space (SA); Fontanelle (SA); Paper Mountain ARI (WA); FELTspace (SA); Light Square Gallery (SA); Tooth and Nail (SA); Format (SA); Sydney Contemporary Art fair (NSW); and has undertaken residencies at SIM in Reykjavik, Iceland, NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, New York and will be in residence at the British School at Rome from April-June 2017. She was a co-Director at FELTspace and co-founder of Axe House Studios.

Melissa McGrath is a curator, educator and artist from Perth, based in Adelaide. Her practice explores creation and transmission of knowledge, focusing on modes of exhibition as vehicles for communication, value, collection and democracy. Melissa has curated many projects - currently a domestic ARI Reception Project Space; has served as Co-Director of Paper Mountain ARI and completed a curatorial residency at Fremantle Arts Centre. She is presently Manager of Arts Programs at Carclew; previously Education Programs Curator at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts; and Evelyn Kelly Lambert Intern 2015/16 at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice and Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas.

Images by Melissa McGrath.