Amanda Bennetts

Amanda Bennetts

b. Fremantle Australia

www.amandabennetts.art

@amanda_bennetts_

Amanda Bennetts is a new media and installation artist, based on the Sunshine Coast (Kabi Kabi Country). Living with a progressive neurological disease and a rare muscular disease, Bennetts draws on her experience to critically dissect issues relating to care, sickness and disability. Examining what it means to be an ill-body in the world, Bennetts navigates a realm of living that is politically charged and socially determined. She creates large installations that engage materiality, incorporating video, sound and mass-produced objects, often with clinical and disability aesthetics.

Bennetts graduated from the Queensland College of Art (QCA) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Photographic Art Practice), where she was awarded the 2022 Industry Award for Best In Show: Visual Arts, Photography and CAIA and the 2022 Outstanding Achievement in a Major—Photographic Art Practice. Her work has been presented in exhibitions at Metro Arts, Brisbane and the Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Brisbane and is a 2023 finalist in The Churchie national emerging art prize.

In 2023 Bennetts exhibited internationally at Ars Electronica festival with a collaborative artwork as an outcome of Ars Electronica x IT:U FOUNDING LAB. Bennetts was a former co-director of IN | artist-run initiative at the Old Lockup in Maroochydore and the founder and co-curator of the 40 Under 40 Exhibition and Art Prize 2020-22. In 2021, her work was curated in the annual Undergrowth exhibition among QCA students' most innovative and conceptually coherent work. Bennetts' high aptitude for art was earlier recognised through the QCA Art in Bark Bursary 2019 award. In 2024, Bennetts will perform as a Hacklab Artist/ Fellow at the CTM x Transmediale Festival in Berlin.