Lauren Brincat

October 31 2016 , by Penelope Benton

Best known for her task-based performances, Lauren Brincat was formally trained in painting, and considers Art as her first language and English as her second.

Drawing inspiration from a range of sources – from durational, body-oriented forms of practice that came to prominence during the 1970s, to Dada and Japan’s Gutai group – Lauren Brincat’s action-based works are also often presented as installations or video documentation and sometimes accompanied by a live element.

Brincat’s video works take the form of documented and often repetitive actions performed by the artist – riding, walking, eating, talking and rowing. These actions are undertaken anonymously and in relative solitude, testing or pushing her ‘physical and cognitive limits’, such as: holding onto the edge of a diving platform above a swimming pool for as long as possible; playing a drum kit raised metres above the ground; or walking along an airport runway.

Brincat completed a Master of Visual Arts at the Sydney College of the Arts in 2006. She was awarded the Australia Council for the Arts Emerging Artist Creative Australia Fellowship in 2012-2014 and the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship in 2009. Brincat has exhibited widely across Australia, including solo exhibitions: No Performance Today (with Bree van Reyk and the NSW Police Marching Band) as part of Sonic Social; Museum of Contemporary Art (2014) and Performance Space (2015); It’s not the End of the World, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne (2013); Shoot From the Hip, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney (2012); Shine on you crazy Diamond, Museum of Old and New Art, MONA FOMA Festival of Music and Art, Hobart (2011). Significant group exhibitions include PP VT (Performance Presence/Video Time), Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide (2015); The space between us: Anne Landa Award, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2013); Contemporary Australia: Women, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2012); TarraWarra Biennial 2012: Sonic Spheres, TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Victoria (2012); Tinnitus: a symposium on art and rock’n'roll, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University (2012).

In 2016, Brincat presented Salt Lines: Play It As It Sounds, Performance Instruments (2016), a site-specific installation at Carriageworks as part of the Biennale of Sydney. The piece was recently purchased by the Art Gallery of NSW to be included in their permanent collection. She is also a finalist in the Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize (2016).

On Sunday 13 November 2016, Brincat and Bree van Reyk will present a new performance called Molto Echo with a team of drummers at the MCA, Sydney NSW.

Brincat has lived and researched in Mexico City, Berlin, Tokyo, Paris, Stockholm and New York and was fortunate to be mentored by artist Johanna Billing in Europe and most recently Cuauhtemoc Medina in Mexico City.

In this video, Brincat chats to NAVA about her journey as an artist, and how local opportunities have led her to international opportunities.

Photo by Alex Wisser, 2016