Artist
Kelly Doley
Kelly is currently exploring what constitutes a contemporary political aesthetic and resistant space. She is making socially engaged art that envisions futures other than capitalist time and space. During her time at Artspace, Doley has been trying to locate a queer/feminist approach to art making that is defined by non-binary, non-linear thinking and works with multiple voices.
She has been experimenting withtemporality, trace,re-enactment, drawing and text through several performance projects.
Her main project has been staging participatory events to discuss the future, Alternative Futures Working Groups. Together in groups of 6-12 people Doley leads a stretched out ‘brainstorming workshop’ to find out what an ideal future looks like. The only requirement for participation is an interest in the future and a desire for change.
She has also been working on a new project with artist collective Brown Council and on a feminist pedagogical project with artist and researcher Diana Smith under the name Sunday School. Together they recently performed a re-enactment of Lucy R. Lippard’s lectures she gave in Australia in 1975.
Biography
Born in 1984, Doley has been exhibiting nationally and internationally since 2007. She is a founding member of Brown Council and currently a PhD Candidate at UNSW Art and Design.
Through collaboration, performance and studio processes informed by feminist and queer theory, Doley’s recent works explore perceptions of the future, conversations as artworks and alternative pedagogical models.
In 2006 Doley graduated with 1st Class Honors from UNSW Art and Design and completed a Masters in 2011 at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. She was the Redlands Prize winner 2012 and recipient of the Qantas Encouragement of Contemporary Art Award (Brown Council) as well as several commissions including the MCA Bella Room.
In 2015 she is a John Fries Prize Finalist and a yearlong artist in residence at Artspace, Sydney. 2015 exhibitions include Embodyed Archive at The Physics Room, Christchurch, Performance Presence/Video Time at AEAF, Adelaide and Art as Verb, Artspace/MUMA.