PRACTICE
Bronte Naylor’s interdisciplinary practice is based in expanded collage; bringing together painting, photography, performance, intervention, social practice, spatial installation, and digital media. Her practice-led research is a continuous dialogue between studio practice and the Antipodean public and private space. Using post-post-studio methodologies, Naylor questions society's validation of authority and hierarchy of place, resources, and expressions of outward positivity in the face of a contrasting reality.Her recent body of work ‘Counterweight’ and more generally her practice is a site-specific response to the post-industrial and infrastructural landscape, in this case, Awabakal and Wormi land (Newcastle), where she lives and works.
Naylor’s work points to the reverse ruin of modern Australia, with particular attention paid to the Western unfamiliarity and denial of mourning. She supposes that ruins of modernity, cement and construction debris, like the human body are a vessel and a paradox of the temporal and historic. A memory of the past and a marker of the passage of time. The artist uses expanded collages to compare emotional anxieties surrounding love, mourning, and rubble. She believes that both make attempts at predicting the future, one of inevitable death, decay, and dismantling.
Naylor acts as an uninvited guest into industrial, state, and privately owned spaces as a defiant act and performance. These excursions are a large part of her practice, scouting for “sites”, but more so a challenging and questioning of how “ownership” of land is enforced in Australia.
The artist’s priority, as opposed to glamouring what industrialisation has left us of the “wild”, is to take a citizen science approach to the documentation of the Anthropocene. Her most recent works present a compilation of imagined flashbacks, fast forwards, and replays as a way to hold time within the work.
CV
Education
2019 Honours Creative Arts Graduating First Class, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia
2016 Bachelor of Creative Industries (Visual Art), James Cook University, Cairns, Australia
2015 Research Program(Photography, History), Institute of Applied Science, Wurzburg, Germany
Experience
2014-22 +50 Murals Public, Private & Commercial
2016-18 Informal apprenticeship sign-writing & large format painting
Residencies
2020- current Creator Incubator, Newcastle
2020 Onward Studio, Newcastle
2017- 2019 On-Campus, University of Southern Queensaldn
2018 Artist in Residence, Why Block, Cairns TAFE, Cairns.
2016 - 2017 Artist in Residence, First Coat Studios, Toowoomba
2014 - 2016 Artist in Residence, Crate 59, Cairns
Solo Exhibitions
2023 Counterweight, Onespace, Brisbane, QLD
2022 Counterweight, LEDA Gallery, Newcastle, NSW
2019 Trespass, Third Quarter, Brisbane. QLD
2018 All the Time, First Coat Gallery, Toowoomba, QLD
2016 Collective Memory, No Comply Gallery, Toowoomba, QLD
2014 Two Empires, Flying Monkey Gallery, Cairns, QLD
Projects
2022 Mentorship from Peter Gardiner, Newcastle Art Space, NSW
2021 Collaboration with Grace Dewar & Laurie Oxenford
PUBLIC PALACE: TOTAL PROCESS, Floating Land Festival, Boreen Point/ Kabi Kabi Country
Prizes
2020 Runner-Up, Brenda Clouten Memorial Travelling Scholarship, Maitland Regional Gallery. Judge: Alex Seton
Group Show
2023 Inside Out, Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcaslte, NSW
2022 Unabbreviated, The Newcastle Museum, Newcastle, NSW
2022 Collect, The Lock Up, Newcastle, NSW
2019 ‘Graduart’ (Graduation show) USQ Gallery / TRAG, Toowoomba AUS
2019 Post Premises, First Coat Gallery, Toowoomba, QLD
2019 Five painters, Bryon Bay School of Art, Bryon Bay, NSW
2018 Destination North, Cairns Regional Gallery, Cairns, QLD
2018 rightNOW, Onespace, Brisbane, QLD
2018 As Above, Crows Nest Regional Gallery, Crows Nest, QLD
2018 A Tropical State, Canopy Art Space, Cairns, QLD
2018 Again and Again, First Coat Studios, Toowoomba, QLD
2017 Surface Tension, Ironlak Art & Design, Brisbane, QLD
2017 Disco Show, Raygun Lab, Toowoomba, QLD
2016 Fastplant, No Comply Gallery, Toowoomba, QLD
2016 Behind the Coast, Tidal/ limited Run, Axis Gallery, Maroochydore, QLD
2016 New Wave, Analogue Gallery, Brisbane, QLD
2016 NEO, Kick Arts Centre of Contemporary Art, Cairns, QLD
2015 With Others, The Tanks Art Centre, Cairns, QLD
2015 Used to Skate Once: 11, OutPost, Brisbane, QLD
2013 Verge, Cairns Regional Art Gallery, Cairns, QLD
2013 Works on Paper, The Tanks Art Centre, Cairns, QLD
2013 Receive and Respond, Crete 59, Cairns, QLD
2012 International Art Swap, MARS – The:GRID Hybrid Arts Collective, Toowoomba, QLD
Public Art Festivals
2021 Alice Springs Street Art Festival, (collaboration w Gus Eagleton) Alice Springs, NT, 8 x 40m
2021 Brisbane Street Art Festival, Brisbane, QLD | 13 x 15 m
2021 Colour Tumby, Tumby Bay, Adelaide, SA | 4 x 8 m
2020 Big Picture Festival, Newcastle, New South Wales, NSW | 9 x 35 m
2020 St+Art India, Chennai, Tamil Nadu | 12 x 10m
2019 First Coat International Street Art Festival, Toowoomba, QLD | 9 x 15 m
2019 Banna Lane Festival, Griffith, NSW | 10 x 25 m
2019 Wonder Walls Festival, Port Kembla, NSW | 8 x 15m
2018 Big Picture Festival, Glenelg, SA | 4.5 x 60 m
2018 Sea Walls: Murals for Oceans, Cairns, QLD | 25 x 3.5m
2017 Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers, Toowoomba, QLD | 6 x 2.4m
2016 First Coat International Street Art Festival, Toowoomba, QLD | 4.5 x 7.5m
2016 First Coat International Street Art Festival, Toowoomba, QLD | 15 x 6 m
2016 First Coat International Street Art Festival, Satellite Project with Brisbane City Council, QLD 30 x 5m
Collections
University of Newcastle Public Art
Select Mural Projects
2022 CrossPoint, This is Not Art x Big Picture Festival x Queer & Now, Mentorship
Community Based ABC Far North Radio, Cairns, QLD | 3 small interior walls
6 x workshops Mentorship & Youth Urban Art Project, Cairns Regional Council | 30 x 30m
Collaboration with local indigenous artist, Telstra, Murgon, QLD | 25 x 7m
Arts Festival, Maridahdi Independent School, Toowoomba, QLD | 15 x 6m
Select Creative Experience
Youth Community Mural | St+Art India, Chennai, Tamil Nadu | 2.2 x 15m
Workshops, Public Artwork on Skate Park, Community Celebration and Exhibition |
Youth Urban Art Project, Cairns Regional Council, Gordonvale Far North Queensland, QLD
6 Week Touring Workshop | Mt.Isa School of the Air, Remote North QLD | 5,000km traveled
6 Week Touring Workshop | Mt.Isa School of the Air, Remote North QLD | 5,000km traveled
Youth Community mural | PCYC Mural, Murgon PCYC, Murgon, QLD | 3.5 x 20m
Winner of Design Competition | Record Store Day, Bunker Records, Toowoomba, QLD
Youth Community mural | National Youth Week’, Dalby PCYC, Dalby, QLD
Leading 4 Week Mentorship |‘Public Air Program’ First Coat Festival, Toowoomba, QLD
School Based Workshop | ‘Large-scale painting’ Fairholme College, Toowoomba, QLD
Live Painting | Horizon Festival Launch’ Tidal/ Limited Run, Caloundra, QLD
Live Painting | Uber Launch The Office, Toowoomba, QLD
Workshop | Concertina Artist Book’, Cairns Regional Art Gallery, Cairns, QLD
Artist Talk | Creative Practice, FNQ R.E.A.C.H Arts Strategy, Cairns, QLD
Workshop | Mixed Media Artist Book’ The Tanks Art Centre, Cairns, QLD
Artist Talk | Pecha Kulcha on Creative Thinking’ The Tanks Art Centre, Cairns, QLD