Kenneth Lambert: Artist Statement & Bio

Kenneth Lambert’s experimental practice embraces disintegrated matter and the inexorable expressions that reflect the human condition. Lambert’s conceptual approach captures the contemporary zeitgeist by transposing themes found in science to illuminate current social issues and rising anxieties of our time. At the intersection of technology and the humanities, the artist’s investigations have led to works utilising particle acceleration to relate to climate change and data translation technology to investigate digital autonomy. Lambert’s cross-disciplinary practice encompasses digital, film, expanded drawing, painting, installation and performance.

Kenneth Lambert is a contemporary artist born in Cape Town, South Africa, who migrated to Australia at age 10, settling in the western suburbs of Sydney. With a background in museums, design, and filmmaking, his conceptually driven practice resides at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and technology. He frequently employs data and scientific methods to generate works across multiple disciplines, including physical and digital works, progressively realised as performative and installation works.

In 2001, he co-founded Ink, a creative company specializing in design and branding for broadcast media. Lambert has developed numerous unique media brands as a creative lead, including SBS Studio and Foxtel Arts. His creative journey encompasses spatial design, starting as a museum designer (The Earth Exchange, Sydney, Australia, and the Museum of Creativity, Santa Monica, USA), and later transitioning into motion design and branding. He has created over 100 media brands across 12 countries and four continents in this role.

In 2008, he established Sheepish Lion, a company specializing in storytelling content for film and video production. He has garnered over 150 awards for his creative excellence as an international designer and director. His creativity has been displayed in museums, achieved “Best of Show” at local and international award shows, and featured in numerous creative-focused magazines, both online and in print.

Lambert leverages his diverse skills in his artistic practice, with a professional background that includes museum and exhibition design and filmmaking. Since 2016, he has exhibited regularly in solo and group shows with Australian ARI and commercial galleries, including Artereal, Articulate project space, COMA, and Galerie pompom. His work has been showcased in award shows in Australia, USA and the UK. In 2019, he was the Grand Prix Prize Winner of the One-Self competition, leading to his work Data Blue being featured at the Scope Art Fair in Miami. In Australia, he has been a finalist in the Churchie Emerging Artist Prize, The Alice Prize, Dobell Drawing Prize, Incinerator Gallery Prize - Art for Social Change, The Fisher’s Ghost Prize, Kilgour Art Prize, Mosan Art Prize, Lumen Prize, Mullens Conceptual Photography Prize.

Lambert has also engaged in artist residency programs, receiving the 2018 Newington Armory Residency Prize. In 2019, he completed his first international residency at Arteles Creative Centre, Finland, and in 2021/22, he completed two consecutive residencies with the National Trust-NSW. In 2022, he developed an arts strategy for Amnesty International Australia through a self-directed residency. He also received grants from Creative Australia and CreateNSW for his project Stasis, a collaboration with STARTTS NSW, supported by Amnesty International and UNHCR. The exhibition was presented at Verge Gallery a 12-channel immersive installation featuring data portraits of youths conveying their experiences as asylum seekers and refugees in Australia. The project was showcased on SBS nightly news in conjunction with Agnès Callamard, the esteemed French human-rights activist and Secretary General of Amnesty International visit to Australia.

Justin Harvey: Artist Statement & Bio

Edge of the Universe is born from a single AI generated black and white image of cosmic darkness rendered into bursts of digital video. The resultant film takes the form of a mirror reflecting our own anxieties and aspirations as we stand on the precipice of the unknown. A black sphere, a gravitational anomaly defying logic, arcs across the celestial canvas. Ethereal creatures observe with eyes that hold the secrets of countless eons. Human forms, flickers of sentience in the cosmic darkness, journey on their eternal quest for meaning, for a glimpse of something beyond the edge of a universe that seems designed to defy comprehension. A whisper in the language of light and code, Edge of the Universe is an invitation to contemplate the vastness of existence and the mysteries that dance at the edge of our understanding.

Unprompted Studies #1-3 are a collaboration between artist and generative artificial intelligence. Rather than inputting text prompts, diffusion models were instructed to create images ‘unprompted’. One image was chosen from thousands to initiate three studies in machine generated animation devoid of text prompts. Each channel displays a unique evolution of imagery based on the source file. What do machines dream of unprompted? It’s complicated.

Justin is a visual artist who lives and works on Gadigal land. He works across moving image, installation and virtual reality experience in solo and collaborative practice. Justin nurtures an ongoing fascination with the creative potentials of human machine interaction, embracing experimental methods that seek to exploit digital imaging technologies and the evolving ‘artificial intelligence’ systems that increasingly drive them in unintended and playful ways. His solo works have explored the ‘glitch’ as aesthetic and political movement, still and moving image collage, the novel shaping of digital video feedback and, more recently, imagery generated using a variety of generative diffusion models. Justin has exhibited work in solo and curated exhibitions in Sydney, Chicago, Vancouver, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and South Korea. He holds a PhD from UNSW, Art, Design & Architecture, and lectures in media arts at University of Technology Sydney.

Thomas Marcusson: Artist Statement & Bio

I like to take things that are familiar to us and display them in a context that provides a new or different meaning. For an example, everyone is familiar with the concept of worrying. But when displayed against the backdrop of a mass collection of worries, we might distinguish patterns and familiarities that make us think of worrying as not a flaw, but an inherently human quality. This is the idea behind my artwork “The Worryball”.

To achieve these kinds of shifts in perception I tend to use some kind of technology. This allows me to use data either generated directly by people or by larger man-made systems; such as a simple phone call in the gallery space or a collection of today’s headlines from hundreds of international newspapers. I can then decontextualise this data and create an experience based around certain themes. Recently, I’ve been exploring themes such as surveillance, globalisation and existentialism.

I also very much enjoy building and constructing my artworks, which might call for either learning the basics of a new programming language or solder a specific computer chip component.

Thomas is an artist combining new technologies with more traditional mediums, such as sculpture and installation, in order to explore themes around science and society. The nexus between a scientific theory and a cultural phenomena allows for new ways to observe and think about each component.

After having studied mathematics in Gothenburg, he went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Technology in Sydney, graduating with 1st class honors. He is now a practising artist in Australia and Europe.

Thomas has been the recipient of various awards and acknowledgements and his work has been exhibited at the Powerhouse Museum (Sydney), the Eyebeam gallery (New York), the Science Gallery (Dublin, Melbourne), theMuseum (Ontario), Bow Arts (London), Konstfack (Stockholm),   NordArt (Hamburg) and Experimenta (Australia).