SUPERCUT - PROJECT 2
6 June - 17 July 2022
Melissa Spratt, Nicholas Tossmann, Chris Howlett, Rachel King & Matthew Newkirk
Nicholas TOSSMANN / Spiral 2022 / single-channel video [still] / 24 min 50 sec
SUPERCUT - Project 2 brings together the practices of Melissa Spratt, Nicholas Tossmann, Chris Howlett, Rachel King and Matthew Newkirk in an exploration of citizenry.
Melissa Spratt is a textile artist who studied at QCA, where she completed her Bachelor of Digital Media with Honours, majoring in Fine Art. Spratt has recently explored textile and surface design elements and works closely with yarn making techniques, where she is most well known for her finger-knitted artworks. Spratt was the winner of the RADFLY Youth Art Prize in 2017, finalist in the Border Art Prize at Tweed Regional Gallery in 2016 and again in 2018 at M-Arts Precinct. She facilitated workshops and was a finalist in the 2018 Swell Sculpture Festival. Spratt was the 2018 invited AiR at The Walls Art Space in Miami, where she had a solo exhibition titled ‘Essential Existence’. Spratt has been successful in several creative grants in recent years. She now looks forward to working within the arts sector more and continuing to collaborate and exhibit her work in the near future.
Nicholas Tossmann is a conceptual artist, working between the Gold Coast and Brisbane in Queensland. Tossmann is intrigued by our innate curiosity as humans and our ability to question irrespective of whether we can find answers. To Tossmann this existential curiosity is why he makes art. His work takes the forms of text, installation, performance and video and is often site specific, utilising spaces and architecture to imagine how we could physically engage and relate to intangible ideas.
Chris Howlett graduated with a MFA from the Californian Institute of the Arts in 2000. His works have been exhibited internationally including at the Berthold Centre, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, European Media Arts Festival (EMAF), Osnabrück, Germany, XXI Triennial International Exhibition in Milan, GamerZ in Marseille, France, Inter-Society of Electronic Arts in Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm, Videoholica International Video Art Festival in Bulgaria, Los Angeles Freewaves Festival of Film, Video and New Media and exhibited work at the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, California. His solo and collaborative works have also been exhibited locally at the Gallery of Modern Art, Institute of Modern Art, the QUT Art Museum, The Arc Biennial for Art & Design and interstate at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Hobart Art Gallery, Cairns Contemporary Art Space and Blindside Artist Run Space in Melbourne. Most recently he completed his Doctor of Philosophy at QUT in Brisbane, Queensland in 2020.
Rachel King is an artist working in painting, sculpture and time-based media. She holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours I and the University Medal) from Sydney College of the Arts and in 2017 studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Her work has been exhibited in Brisbane, Sydney, Hobart, Vienna and Edinburgh.
Matthew Newkirk is a practising artist and PhD candidate at the Queensland College of Art. The focus of his research is an examination of the contemporary media landscape filled with mixed messages, strategies and technologies that influence, control, and manipulate public opinion. He suggests that there is apathy in the general public towards news because of the way it is presented to, and consumed by, the community. His investigations of new frameworks by which to convey information that resist manipulation are founded on the proposition that artists and art remain the most effective means to convey information while resisting outside exploitation and falsification.
SUPERCUT is supported by the Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand (RISE) Fund – an Australian Government Initiative and is presented in partnership with Artspace Mackay and Northsite Contemporary Arts, Cairns.