David Haines and Joyce Hinterding
Dr David Haines and Joyce Hinterding are artists based in the Blue Mountains, NSW, who work both collaboratively and independently.
Haines & Hinterding’s collaborative practice spans large-scale immersive video, real-time interactive 3D environments, sound, sculpture, photography and installation, often focussed on revealing the unseen and the unheard. Their collaborative work brings together interests developed through their individual practices. Hinterding investigates energetic forces, while Haines’ work is concerned with the intersection of hallucination and the environment. Together, they create sensory environments that move between the physical and virtual, and often explore the tension between the fictive and the phenomenal.
Hinterding’s practice explores physical and virtual dynamics. Her investigations into energetic forces use custom-built field recording and monitoring technologies, including VLF antennas. This work has produced large sculptural antenna works, experimental graphite drawings, video and sound-producing installations, and experimental audio works for performance. Her audio work has been released by Sigma Editions/Antiopic and Rec-Energies, an archive of audio works made with Haines.
Haines has been practising since the late 1980s, with a wide-ranging practice spanning video, sound, sculpture, photography and painting. His work includes unusual forms of image-making, real-time 3D game engines and virtual reality, alongside installation and sound performance. He also works with aroma, exploring the possibilities of smell in contemporary art and installation. Haines has released music with Sigma Editions/Antiopic and Rec-Energies, and under the name Pliny the Alpinist.
Haines & Hinterding’s collaborative work was the subject of the survey exhibition Energies: Haines & Hinterding at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in 2015, followed by Résonances Magnétiques at La Panacée, Montpellier, France, in 2016. Their work received an Award of Distinction at Prix Ars Electronica, and in 2019 Hinterding received the Australia Council Award for Emerging and Experimental Arts. Alongside major exhibitions, Haines & Hinterding participate in local arts festivals and work with small arts organisations, undertaking extensive fieldwork and off-site work in the development of site-specific projects.
Recent exhibitions include Ether at Sumer, Auckland (2025); What Does the Jukebox Dream Of? at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Free to Air at The Commercial, Sydney, Energy Fields: Vibrations of the Pacific at the Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University, Los Angeles, and Spin Off: Magnum Opus (Zero minus Zero: The ceiling of the sky beneath the earth) at Daejeon Museum of Art, Korea (2024). They participated in the 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, in 2022, as well as the 2002 and 1992 Biennales of Sydney.
Their work is held in public and private collections in Australia and internationally. Haines and Hinterding are represented by Sumer and Syrup Contemporary.
Hinterding is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. Haines lectures at Sydney College of the Arts and has previously held academic positions at UNSW and Western Sydney University.
In this interview, Haines & Hinterding discuss how collaboration has expanded their individual practices and created new opportunities for learning and experimentation. They reflect on the changing value of art and the ongoing need to advocate for artists, and how NAVA’s Code of Practice has helped them understand their rights, navigate contracts and commissions, and support younger artists to do the same.
Video production by Atypical 2026.
Photo by Joe Wagdahl.
ID: Photo of David and Joyce sitting in their studio, surrounded by shelves with boxes and other things, on the desk in front of them is an audio mixer, monitor, cables and other equipment, a large black artwork with star like dots is against the wall behind them.
About NAVA
The National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) is a Membership organisation that brings together the many voices of the contemporary arts sector to improve fundamental conditions of work and practice. We do this through advocacy, education and the Code of Practice.
