Evaluator Melissa Ryke (Artist)

My current practice focuses on a critical and playful investigation of the quotidian and experimentation with the time based media of sound and video. Through these mediums the key notion of a bodily disorientation in space is explored. In effect this concept also explores ideas surrounding process, repetition and difference, chance, collaboration, the absurd, the infinite, the temporal, the metaphysical, and interactions in space. Through an engagement with the everyday, the editing of video and sound appear as a strategy that allows events to be reconsidered in a new context. Through a process of editing, time can also be referred to as a medium which in integral to the everyday. In my practice time is explored as a medium that has non-linear and sensorial qualities. By manipulating time through video, sound and installation I explore the possibility to see alternate potential realities in the mundane. In my practice, these potential realities seek to enhance and manipulate a dynamic response to space. I am particularly interested in the use of humour to value play and artistic practice as an aesthetic habit in which to abandon reason. Humour is used a subtle framework in which time, the body as sensation and the quotidian are engaged with in my practice. This is often explored through collaborative efforts and engaging with absurdist notions of making. Collaboration is a key playful process within my current practice. My previous collaborative efforts have evolved out of playful and critical responses to everyday moments. These performative moments are reframed through digital media to generate poetic and absurd notions of reality. Transitions between identity, action, purpose, space and the self are also explored through this process. Collaboration is a strategy that is constantly being explored as a dynamic approach to making new and exciting work in my practice. It is also the site in which critical dialogue about contemporary art practices is undertaken.