Digital Public Art Commission: ‘Breathing Spaces' by Jenna Lee

Howard Smith Wharves, 5 Boundary Street, Brisbane Tuesday, April 27, 2021, 6 – 11:30pm Brisbane City Council has an extensive public art collection of approximately 500 diverse objects, ranging from large-scale, contemporary sculpture to integrated bespoke elements located throughout the city and surrounding suburbs. For the first time Council has commissioned digital, site-specific, artworks for the city’s public art collection by four leading and emerging local, female artists and shown at Council’s newest Outdoor Gallery location at Howard Smith Wharves. This is the first time all four artworks are on display to the public. These four artworks are: Judy Watson artwork, ‘water under the bridge tumamun’, curated by Blaklash Projects Jenna Lee’s artwork ‘Breathing Spaces’, curated by Blaklash Projects Hailey Atkins artwork, ‘Whither Weather’, curated by Alex Holt and Sarah Thomson Phoebe Paradise artwork, ‘Subtropical Surreal’, curated by Alex Holt and Sarah Thomson About the artist: Jenna is a Larrakia, Wardamanand Karajarriwoman whose contemporary art practice explores the acts of identification, labelling and the relationships formed between language, label and object. Being a Queer, Mixed Race, Asian, Aboriginal Woman, Jenna’s practice is strongly influenced by her overlapping identities, childhood memory and maternal teachings on subjectivity and process. Lee won the prestigious Telstra NATSIAA for WandjukMarika Memorial 3D Award; was the recipient of the 2019 Australia Council Young and Emerging Dreaming Award; presented at the National Indigenous Arts Awards in 2019; as well as one of 10 finalists in the prestigious John Fries Award for emerging and early career Australian and New Zealander artists. In 2018 Jenna was a finalist in the 35th Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) as well a finalist in the 2018 Blacktown Art Prize. In 2018, Jenna won the tertiary category in the Libris Artist Book Prize for her the loose-leaf artist book ‘A Plant in the Wrong Place’. About the artwork:Breathing Spaces is a poem using historic words from the ‘Breathing Spaces’ chapter of Greater Brisbane Scheme 1929 that describes the importance of breathing spaces within Brisbane. Nearly 100 years on, Council is still committed to increasing Green Spaces around the city. This work aims to contribute towards an appreciation of our collective past through the mixing of words based on the location of the wharves and the surrounding area, with knowledge of First Nations peoples. Event type: Art, Free Cost: Free Bookings: No bookings required. Bookings required: No