I have been invited to participate in an extremely prestigious and exciting exhibitor at RMIT called Future U, curated by Dr Evelyn Tsitas and Associate Professor Jonathan Duckworth. This show will commence 25 June – 9 October 2021, with the production of my work needing to be complete by early June.

My work is an extremely provocative photographic image intended to spark conversation and thinking around our current uptake of technology and how it is impacting our intimate relationships.

The synopsis of the work is below: (please be advised that the following synopsis uses course language)

Artist Statement:

"Techno-Romance is a digital photographic work depicting a young woman, in a private domestic setting, either inserting or expelling a mobile device from her vagina. Within a Technological Determinist framework, this work is a direct critique on mobile dating applications such as Tinder, highlighting the unprecedented changes in human behaviour both romantically and sexually, and the implications of this from an evolutionary standpoint, where the search for intimacy and connection begins, and often ends, with a device. This work explores this new media visuality and how it is characterised by new consumption rituals and practices which see people become quantifiable, disposable and dehumanised. It attempts to ask “what aspects of sex and romantic love will we inevitably transcend as we become posthuman?”. As the woman inserts the phone into her body, one is unable to discern, is she fucking the device, or the device fucking her?

The image will be printed on duratran and installed on a lightbox, to amplify the luminosity and 3D objectness, presenting the object as protagonist and referencing screen culture. This lihytbox will then be installed upon a wall that has been split in two, with the box cascading over the gap.