Portable Domains

Curated by astute art investments international (AAII)
with Kieron Broadhurst, Michelle Proksell 媚潇 & Gabriele de Seta, Song Xi 宋兮 & Yang Xinjia 杨欣嘉, Giselle Stanborough and Ying Miao苗颖.

02.12.2015 - 18.12.2015
Opening 02.12.15 6-8pm
Artist Talks 17.12.15 6-7pm

Portable Domains traces movements in self-styled domains, from bricks and mortar real estate to social media accounts and personal websites, investigating the seductions, compulsions and transportability of these spaces in a hyper-competitive world. The exhibition develops ideas around artists’ voices competing to be heard, both on and offline—considering strategies for building social and cultural capital with limited resources. More than institutional critique or an exercise in self-reflexivity, these experiments and experiences signal the contemporary state of self-promotion, self-curating and self-branding that have become prerequisites for individuals to stake a claim in our societies and the information economy. Portable Domains is an exhibition outcome of AAII, an active network of artists and curators working across Sydney, Hong Kong and Beijing. Using digital platforms such as WeChat – a popular messaging app in China – AAII is an immediate and open response to the practical and structural barriers, such as language and censorship, that can limit artists’ ability to work cross-culturally.

Biography

Kieron Broadhurst
Kieron Broadhurst is an artist based in Perth. Through a diverse range of media his work explores the possibilities of narrative and world building within contemporary art practice. Kieron is currently undertaking a PhD at Curtin University and is a key representative of the Martin Kippenberger Appreciation Society.

Michelle Proksell 媚潇 & Gabriele de Seta
Michelle Lee Proksell 媚潇 (b. Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, 1985) is an independent researcher, curator, artist, musician, photographer and writer currently based in Beijing, China. The majority of her research and curatorial practice is published under an archive she started, documenting and interviewing emerging digital and post-internet artists in China at www.netize.net. As an artist, she works with video, sound, performance and her ongoing Chinternet Archive – a collection of vernacular digital artifacts from the Chinese Web. She is most interested in the physicality of the Internet and its relationship to human behavior, emotions and social interactions. Gabriele de Seta is a media anthropologist studying digital folklore and media practices of vernacular creativity in contemporary China. He collects, curates and narrates the genres of user-generated content, local humor and platform-specific aesthetics circulating across Chinese postdigital media ecologies. He also meddles with experimental music and Internet art.

Giselle Stanborough
Giselle Stanborough is an emerging intermedia artist whose practice often addresses online user generated media and the way in which such technologies encourage us to identify and perform notions of self. She graduated from COFA in 2010 with the University Medal and since then has exhibited in galleries around NSW and in Melbourne. Her work has been shown online in The Washington Post’s “Pictures of The Day” and in Hennessy Youngman’s “Art Thoughtz”.

Song Xi 宋兮 & Yang Xinjia 杨欣嘉
Born in 1983 in Qiqihaer, Heilongjiang, China, Song Xi 宋兮is a Beijing-based artist from the Daur ethnic minority group, who works across performance, video and installation. In 2006 he graduated from Art and Design College, Dalian University of Light Industry. His solo exhibitions include Continuous Movement, 203 Gallery, Shanghai in 2015 and Songxi·Allegory, Piltover gallery, Dusseldorf, Germany in 2014. His work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions in China, Australia and the UK. Yang Xinjia 杨欣嘉was born in Puning Guangdong Province in 1983. He graduated from Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in 2006 and now lives and works in Beijing. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan and his debut solo exhibition was held at Fang Space Gallery, Beijing in 2013.

Ying Miao 苗颖
Ying Miao is an internet artist who currently resides on The Internet (thedeadpixelofmyeye.com), the Chinese Internet (the Great Fire Wall) and her smartphone. She received her BFA from the China Academy of Fine Art’s New Media Arts department, and her MFA from the School of Art and Design at SUNY Alfred University, with a focus in Electronic Integrated Arts. She has shown her works in mainland China, Taiwan, Europe, the United States, on the internet and the virtual world of Second Life. Her most recent solo exhibition is in the Chinese pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale.