Michelle Le Plastrier is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on hand-building ceramics, exploring the balance between sculptural and functional. Michelle teaches introduction to hand-building courses in Brisbane.
She has produced workshops for Gold Coast Arts and Culture, Pacific Fair and here at HOTA. Michelle graduated from a Bachelor of Visual Media from the Queensland College of Art.
#The Project
Michelle will develop a body of work exploring evolution and adaptation in correlation with global warming and the imminent weather extremes. She’ll be hosting workshops and inviting audience for participatory activations to theoretically explore ways in which life forms may evolve or adapt. An investigation will be carried out to research flora’s and fauna’s response to the changing climate, fast forwarding adaptation and hypothesising features and characteristics they would develop for survival. Will humans need gills and flippers? Will camels need to grow wings to fly?
Through community participation she will collect an extensive range of collages and small clay models documenting these hypothetical evolutions and supply rationale for these newly imagined fantastical creatures. These creatures will then become the basis for larger sculptures for the body of work.
#Collage, Climate and Conversation
In November 2021, Michelle presented a free workshop for the community, exploring the extremes of evolution and climate change, and imaging possible futures:
#Creative Development Program History
We support artists and art-making and provide platforms for creative development, presentation, and collaboration at all stages along the presentation pipeline. We’re committed to helping artists connected to our region take risks, experiment, and create great art.
HOTA’s Creative Development Program is both responsive and opportunistic. Our annual offer to artists reflects the program of a developing precinct, and what’s happening in our sector.
More than this, it is HOTA’s chance to reaffirm our commitment to our artistic community and its continued growth and development.
In 2019, our inaugural Creative Development Program flung the doors open for 12 projects to spend significant time in development on site at HOTA, with a little help from our friends at City of Gold Coast. If you were lucky enough to see the premiere of the extraordinary dance theatre work Glass Child in March 2021, or you’ve attended a Stories in the Key of GC event curated by Cold Ghost, you’ve experienced some of the outstanding projects by local artists that we backed from their inception.
In 2020, on the outbreak of the pandemic, HOTA was quick to adapt the original program offer, and proudly supported 51 digital projects to be developed and delivered online at rapid speed through our Rage against the V(irus). You can still view many of the works online here. We also fast-tracked the commissioning of 19 local artists to make and present work for the inaugural exhibition in the new HOTA Gallery: Sold Gold: Artists from Paradise.
In 2021, our Creative Development Program continues to respond to the conditions created by the pandemic, where our response was the inaugural ArtKeeper initiative.
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