CURATOR TALK // Zoë Bastin

Hear from CONFLATED co-curator and artist Zoë Bastin

Zoë Bastin is an artist with an expanded choreographic practice that considers exhibition, installation, publication, and performance as part of the same political project – the reorganisation of societal structures that limit bodies.

Zoë considers situations, movements and objects as connected in artistic production, her projects operate within academic, gallery, theatre and public art realms traversing artistic modes. This practice emerged during visual art studies (BFA, Hons) considering the sculptural potential of the physical body. She studied, then later taught, at Mangala Studios in Carlton, an important site in the lineage of Australian German Expressionist Dance (est.1970). In recent years her research has become increasingly interested in the complexity of practices, ideologies, and aesthetic modes of making within settler Australian legacies of dance and their intersection with visual art

CONFLATED

When we inhale and exhale, our bodies transform through the process of inflation and deflation. Drawing on the inflatable form as both material and metaphor, Conflated brings disparate artists together to explore bodies, environments and cultures through contemporary art. Here, the cycle of breathing serves as a framework through which a wide array of experiences, behaviours and expressions are examined.

Conflated is a NETS Victoria touring exhibition, curated by Zoë Bastin and Claire Watson. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government's Visions of Australia program and the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria.

Image: Zoë Bastin, Enough, 2021, HD video with audio: 4 minutes 47 seconds. Courtesy the artist.