PROJECT: 10 Days on the Island Festival
ARTIST: Jacob Leary
ARTWORK TITLE: Alien Presence
LOCATION: Spring Bay Mill, Triabunna
DATE: 2015
Commission as part of an exhibition componant within Arts Tasmania's annual 10 Days on the Island Arts Festival, this site specific installation was created on the site of the old Spring Bay Mill. Curators Anna Cerneaz and Jane Deeth asked the selected artists to draw inspiration from the site as a basis for their work. Alien Presence used the forms and repartitions of old office furniture found at the mill as the foundation for a large-scale tape drawing installed within the site.
ARTIST BIO:
Jacob Leary is a multi-disciplinary artist with a practice spanning a range of mediums including painting, prints, video and installation. His tendency toward the dynamic has fed his preoccupation with assemblage. Creating artworks that operate within a series, Leary allows for a tendency toward change to occur. It is this investigation not only of aesthetically pleasing pattern and systems, but also the theories of philosophers such as Manuel DeLanda, which informs how his artworks are executed.
Leary completed his Masters of Fine Arts at the Hobart School of Art in 2011, undertaking research via a series of eclectic installations exploring the exponential growth of technology within contemporary culture. He has since been invited to participate in a range of high profile exhibitions and initiatives including Hobart Current: Liberty 2020 in conjunction with the City of Hobart and the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the 2017 QANTAS Curates Initiative, which saw his works featured on the airline’s international Business Class amenity kits, exhibiting with the Tasmanian College of the Arts as part of DarkMofo in 2016 and with the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery in 2013, as part of their Emerging Artists Program.
He has won numerous awards for his work, including the John Fries Memorial Prize (2012), a national award for emerging visual artists, and has also been the recipient of multiple grants including a Contemporary Art Tasmania Studio Grant in 2012 and an Australia Council Grant for Emerging Artists in 2013. He was a finalist in the Glover Prize (2018), the Hutchins Art Prize – Works on Paper (2018), the Redlands Art Prize (2016), the Burnie Print Prize (2015) and the City of Hobart Prize - Printmaking (2014). He has undertaken commissions for Hobart College and MONA FOMA and the Moonah Arts Centre.
Jacob is currently a seasonal staff member at the Hobart School of Art. His work is held in the collections of Artbank, University of Tasmania, Justin Art House Museum, RACT Collection, Tasmanian Government, llisington Collection and Ormond College.
