Anita Cummins creates abstract self-portraiture with everyday materials that are habitually used and collected over a duration of time. Food, drink and prescription medication packaging, tissues collected from therapy sessions and the inner coil unit of their twenty-two year old mattress make up the materials of this recent body of work. These materials are transformed using arduous and repetitive methodologies that resist the pressure of efficiency and productivity. Cummins’ research resides in the exploration of neurodivergent, queer, antinormative and unproductive states as spaces for processing complexity and resisting conformity.
Anita Cummins is a white, neurodivergent and queer visual artist living on unceded Wurundjeri land in Naarm (Melbourne). In 2018 they received the Les Kossatz Memorial Award for their Honours graduate showcase. This led to their inclusion in the national graduate showcase Hatched at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, for which they were awarded the Schenberg Fellowship 2019. Recent exhibitions include 4am flaming arrows, Bundoora Homestead, Stimulus Package, Darebin City Council FUSE Festival, 2021, Some kind of mood, Cool Change Contemporary, 2019, Hatched, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, 2019, feelings, Monash University, 2018.
Mira Gojak’s drawings and sculptures attempt to trace how the contours of the forces of gravity, weight, suspension and resistance can be experienced in the body. Her sculptures are enacted as drawings in space that materialise a place where the distinction between the internal and external is unclear. Here the idea of the void becomes a site, as a result of actions played out, in and through time. Gojak has been concerned in her recent works with the blue sky and its apprehension in light of recent conceptions of change and possibility in the time of the Anthropocene.
Mira Gojak is an Australian artist who was born in Adelaide in 1963 and now works in Melbourne. Her sculptures are like linear drawings in space, tracing the forces of gravity and suspension that we can feel. They create a sense of inside and outside space. Gojak is also known for her drawings.