Here and Now: Gold Coast Triennial 2024 Digital Gallery
Kathy Mackey
b.1961 Brisbane QLD, lives Gold Coast QLD
Artefacts of Leisure , 2024
three-channel digital video installation
09:10 minutes, looped with sound, 06:00 minutes, 05:00 minutes
Videography: Steve Mackey and Claudio Kirac
Commissioned for Here and Now: Gold Coast Triennial
Image courtesy of HOTA, Home of the Arts
Artist Statement
The Gold Coast is renowned for its love affair with water and outdoor activities. In Artefacts of Leisure, Kathy Mackey responds to assumptions about “organised leisure,” particularly water-based exercises in swimming pools.
Kathy’s research explores how ageing bodies and artificial accessories, in this case, the humble pool noodle, move through these spaces as a form of mark-making.
Kathy takes us beneath the surface to view these behaviours and to gently play with the irony of how leisure seemingly has become institutionalised.
About the Artist
Kathy Mackey is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores the liminal spaces between the natural and the artificial - and public and private realms. She works across photography, video, installation and community-based practices and is particularly interested in the sites and behaviours associated with leisure. Mackey completed her Ph.D exegesis The Post-tourist Mirror in 2011.
In 2021 and 2022, as one of the GENERATE GC artists she undertook extensive research into the concept of organised leisure as a form of site responsive work. Her project entitled “Let’s Organise Your Leisure” (LOYL) was successfully piloted at HOTA in January 2022.The project was further developed through an artist-in-residence project at the Georges River in Sydney during the following autumn. Further iterations of LOYL were presented at the SWELL Sculpture Festival (Gold Coast) in September 2022 and the HORIZON Festival at the Sunshine Coast in September 2023.
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