Monday, 3 September 2007

From the artful recreation of mutated frogs that ressemble their extinct original species to the fallouts of biowarfare and torture, the seminal exhibition Still, Living will showcase an international scope of art that deals with biological systems, as part of the third Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth.

Curated by Paris based curator Jens Hauser and produced by SymbioticA (recent winners of the Golden Nica for Hybrid Art as part of the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica 2007), Still, Living will be a tour de force of experimental biological art and an opportunity for Perth audiences to experience and engage with work from eleven artists at the forefront of cutting edge aesthetics, including rarely exhibited wet biological art practices.

The exhibition features work from high profile artists including ORLAN - most significantly known for her surgery performances to refigure herself, Critical Art Ensemble - a collective of tactical media practitioners specialising in intersecting arts and technology, and local artists The Tissue Culture & Art Project, as well as other major international mainplayers  in this field.

Curator Jens Hauser believes that biology's ascent to the status of hottest physical science has has generated a wide range of biotech procedures that are providing artists simultaneously with the topics and new expressive media. "Artists are in the labs," Hauser comments. "But art that deals with carbon-based biological systems is ephemeral by its very nature. The artists featured in Still, Living act less by pure technophile affirmation of anthropocentric biotechnological prowess or cognitive dominance over the non-human than by reflected scepticism towards our current notions of progress. What if we considered nowadays art that deals with biological systems as a contemporary vanitas version of yesteryears tradition of Still Life? They are both reminders of life's impermanence and human's transitory nature."

Spread across two rooms at The Bakery ARTRAGE Complex, projects range from a two-headed worm searching for the right direction, bird-operatable technology, the non/sense and nuances of DNA fingerprinting, a multiethnic skin coat of many colours, architecture that is literally growing, a bleeding angel and other notions of life in the 21 st century.

Still, Living artists presented in BEAP07 are: Art Orienté objet (France), Chandrasekaran and Gary Cass (Singapore/Australia), Tissue Culture and Art Project (Australia), Verena Kaminiarz (Germany/Canada), Paul Vanouse (USA), Critical Art Ensemble (USA), Natalie Jeremijenko (Australia/USA), Zbigniew Oksiuta (Poland/Germany), ORLAN (France), Beatriz da Costa (Germany/USA), Brandon Ballengee (USA)

Still, Living

The Bakery ARTRAGE Complex | 233 James St Northbridge

15-23 September 2007 | 12pm - 6pm daily

www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au | www.artrage.com.au

Major supporter ;The University of Western Australia | Supported by ARTRAGE

For more information or images contact;

Fiona Hulton, Marketing Manager, ARTRAGE

(08) 9227 6288  ext 108  or  0401 013 944

[email protected]

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