Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier are an artist love team based in Sydney. They share a conceptual practice and make artwork using textiles and sound. In galleries and institutions their exhibitions explore strategies of criticality and care. Kite flying , cocktail partys and jam nights, are as much a part of their practice as any traditional art form. This is a tactic of alternate exhibitioning and relational exchange. They place a high value on peer to peer engagement, prioritising agency and reciprocity amongst artists. They create audio-visual worlds for intimate experiences, wielding personal emotions of love and friendship, sincerity, and grief.
Joe and Chanelle are influenced by the International Situationist movement 1960’s and contemporary media theory, evidenced through the use of vintage materials and combinations of found text and imagery. With a methodology of resistance, play, and gift giving, they are interested in the role of art in social change; and how artists are implicated within institutional power.
Recent projects include the formation of their band ‘Farewell Tour’, electric psych-rock over field recordings, which developed on residency and performance at Bundanon Museum on the south coast. Coinciding with ‘Mixtape Radio’, a rich sound archive presented as a monthly broadcast on Resonance Extra in the UK; featuring unique merch and cassettes with every episode.
Past projects include This Is Not A Love Song, an archive of field recordings of museum spaces; Play Something Else Cowboy, a cocktail bar project which imparts agency through direct conversation; and Summer of 68, which researches the language of resistance with textiles.
Wilson has a First Class Honours and Master of Fine Art by Research, supervised by Dr Stephen Little and Geoff Kleem, National Art School, Sydney, 2017. He was selected as a finalist for Hatched, PICA, 2017, and shortlisted in 2015.
Collier, was a finalist in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize, 2011 and 2012; Fishers Ghost Award, 2011; Deakin University Contemporary Small Sculpture Award, 2012; and the Libris Award, 2013.
Wilson and Collier have collaborated since 2015 each is supported by a Higher Ground Studios Residency; Winners, Viewer’s Choice Award, Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize, 2018. Grants, Residencies, and Fellowships including: Cité Internationale des Arts, France, 2018, returning in 2019; NAVA Create NSW Artist Grant, 2018; Create NSW Artist Grant, 2021; Create NSW Covid Development and Project Grants in 2022; The Renshaws inaugural Artist Residency 2022 and Finalists in the Artspace Emerging Visual Arts Fellowship 2022; Residency & Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center, USA, 2022; Artists in Residence, Bundanon Trust, 2022 and 2023. Commissioned collaboration, Phoenix Central Park, 2021.
Wilson and Collier have been published or featured in Artist Profile #55; UNION Magazine #2; M17: The Big Circle catalogue; Catseye Bay design techniques (2020 dissertation); Resonance Extra (UK); EastSide 89.7 Arts Monday.
Not Nothing is a way of doing in our art practice. It's sometimes just showing up, going through the motions or some high speed whatever. In it we are freed from the looming paralysis of indecision, self judgment, fear and perfectionism. And flung into a 'fuck this, do it anyway' punk-like approach that promises, at the very least, that failure is still a foward move. And Anything will do to get you there. The only way to do this wrong, is to not do anything at all.
The bare minimum, the easy way, the fun way, the whatever-i-feel-like-right-now way, are all on offer here. And they all hold some-thing. Some lightly potent thing, that somehow always ends up being more than enough.
come visit
Visitors welcome at Higher Ground Studios, in Annandale, Sydney.
EMAIL OR CALL US xo
