Artist in Residence

ARTIST IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM

Each year Assemblage runs an Artist in Residence programme which is the result of a competitive application process. The two – three month residency is designed to benefit the chosen artist as well as our students and researchers. Their work is allied to the major research themes of Assemblage.

2021 Artist in Residence – Liam Somerville.

Liam Somerville is a cinematographer and video artist living and working on Kaurna Land, South Australia. He graduated from the University of South Australia in 2011 with a Bachelor of Digital Media Arts, specialising in film and animation. Since then Liam has been committed to the exploration of the moving image and is obsessed with distortion and manipulation of digital visual realities. His video work plays with human interaction in the digital world by injecting human processing into virtual/digital realms by use of game engines like Unreal Engine, node-based coding and a range of interactive sensors and hardware. Liam’s experimental nature means that his work is forever evolving as new tools, techniques or technologies are discovered and introduced into the workflow.

For his residency at Flinders, Liam teamed up again with long-time collaborator Michael Ellingford who created the interactive techno soundtrack for his project Eschatech. They have worked together on multiple projects over the years and have developed a deep artistic connection. Michael has written, recorded, mixed and released music spanning genres from techno, noise, experimental and doom metal.

“During the Assemblage Artist-in-residence program, I created a VR experience titled Eschatech which is a simulation of the last 100 seconds of humanity on planet earth. The player is given no objectives but is free to explore the landscape to discover virtual dance, digital sculptures and the last remains of human life before their time runs out. The digital landscape illustrates some of the catastrophic environmental devastations that humans have inflicted upon our home planet earth since industrialization.

The project was created using the latest motion capture technology available in The Void at the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University. The data from actors and performers was then piped into Unreal Engine to influence particle systems and character models. This world-class tech allows creatives like me to achieve an extremely high fidelity of renditions of human performances that can provide hyper-realistic virtual 3D animation.” - Liam Somerville

View Liam’s work here

Recently Liam and sonic collaborator Michael Ellingford exhibited their immersive piece NOISE//NATURE at the Lab in Adelaide. The meditative installation hypnotised viewers seated with soft gradients and natural shapes, created and composed in virtual 3D space.

Earlier in 2021, Liam was approached to participate in an artistic partnership between Northern Sound System (NSS), BLKMPIRE and Flinders University to assist in the creation of an animated contemporary indigenous Welcome to Country with local musicians MRLN and Jimblah. The clip was created using Niagara particle systems inside Unreal Engine and the characters are driven by motion capture data from The Void.

2020 Artist in Residence – Kate Power.

Kate is an Adelaide-based artist and writer whose practice embraces video, performance, textiles, sculpture and installation. She observes social environments to think about how seemingly insignificant moments affect us psychologically and physiologically. Over a period of 2 months Kate developed a new project titled Mush to Muscle that allied her sculpture practice with embodiment and the choreographic. Over this time she was able to make connections to staff, researchers and students, drawing on the facilities available to her at our university.

“I’m thrilled to be selected as the first artist-in-residence at the new Creative Arts Centre, Assemblage. The time to deep dive into my new project, while being part of a diverse community, is an incredible opportunity to expand my knowledge and creative approaches. While working at Flinders I plan to begin a new performance project that will use text, movement and sculpture to research connections between emotions and the gut. Drawing on the writings of philosopher Sianne Ngai, poet Claudia Rankine and queer theorist Sara Ahmed, this new work asks how patriarchal control is processed and stored in the body. I’m really looking forward to exploring the Medical Centre, Flinders University Museum of Art, the creative writing department and connecting with academics and students who are interested in similar themes of intersectional research.” - Kate Power

View Kate’s work here