Eugene Choi, Cybele Cox, David Griggs
Nothing human is alien to me

Nothing human is alien to me looks at ways in which the physical landscape of the body coalesces with the tender, emotional and vulnerable sensation of self.

Artspace One Year Studio Artists, Eugene Choi, Cybele Cox and David Griggs, come together for the first time to present a series of new works created in the Artspace studios. Focusing on the space between the internal and external scaffolds of the body, this exhibition becomes a medium to explore the fundamental and unifying experiences of love, prevailing resilience and the search for belonging.

Eugene Choi is a performance-based artist whose practice has evolved around the physicality of constructing internal and external structures working across sculpture, performance, installation, video and text. Often influenced by the body in movement, Choi seeks comfort through intimate gestures, relying on the live response of her physical and emotional body. A self-made system of geometry becomes integral between objects, bodies and space, attempting to achieve equilibrium. 

Recent work commissions include: SOLO PAUSES (amitié dans deux mondes) for the Redlands Konica Minolta Art Prize (NSW) in March 2017. My mother only speaks Shanghainese when she talks to her brother on the phone (these plants are gift for her) for Master of Three Worlds at COMA Gallery (NSW) in September, 2017. Praise!, a performance at Underbelly Arts Festival (NSW) in collaboration with Marcus Whale (Musician) and Polyphony (Choir) in October, 2017. Vanishing and Labour of Love for Sydney Contemporary (& off-site at Barangaroo) over the course of September, 2017. 

As a dancer and performer, Choi has had the pleasure of working with artists such as Xaxier Le Roy for Temporary Title 2015 (NSW), Tino Sehgal for This Is So Contemporary (NSW) Agatha Gothe-Snape for Rhetorical Chorus (NSW), Tully Arnot for Nutational Follies (NSW), Rowan Oliver for The gal of localised sustainability at West Space (VIC), Ivan Cheng for Copernican Coining (NSW), Angela Goh for Scum Ballet at Campbelltown Arts Centre (NSW)

Cybele Cox’s practise explores ancient feminine symbols and occult mysticism, which enquires into representations of women in the western art canon. Using hand built ceramic totems and figures, painting, drawing and more recently costume, Cox seeks to re-invoke occult practices of an imagined ancestral lineage.

In 2015 Cox was curated into, Romance Died Romantically and featured in a full review in the The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. She undertook last year an exchange at The Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and exhibited in Rundgang and Aa Collections in Vienna and received a NSW artist grant to pay production costs. Cox was the winner of The Stonevilla Wearable Arts 2017, and recently previewed for her 2017 exhibition at First Draft in Museum Magazine. Recent solo exhibitions include Ornamental Hallucination at First Draft 2017 and the Graduation exhibition at Sydney College of the Arts Galleries 2018. Earlier this year the third incarnation of The Golden Flowerpot with collaborator Ali Noble, entitled Arcane Folly was shown in Lismore Regional Gallery. And most recently for Art Month Sydney in partnership with Eduardo Wolfe-Alegria, Hel’s Gate, The grotto chamber of Norse Goddess Hel. Cox is the recipient of Artspace One Year Studio Program.

Famous for his bold, anarchistic approach, David Griggs’s unique blend of portraiture, political imagery and vernacular motifs explore the darker side of the human condition. Griggs has exhibited extensively throughout Australia and South East Asia, including notable exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne; Blacktown Arts Centre, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Artspace, Sydney; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and Manilla Contemporary, Philippines. Griggs has been selected as finalist in the 2007, 2009, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017 Archibald Prizes. Most recently, David Griggs presented a major survey exhibition BETWEEN NATURE AND SIN at Campbelltown Arts Centre, NSW, which is scheduled to tour Australia until late 2019. In 2009, Griggs presented New York Paris London Rome Manila City Jail, at Green Papaya Art Projects in Manila as part of a cooperation with Asia Link and the Australian Embassy. In 2003, Griggs was awarded the Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Artists, the Willoughby City Art Prize in 2001; and in 1997 the Sir William Dobell Art Scholarship.

Griggs’ work is held in major museum collections in Australia, including the Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; University of Queensland and the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney as well as important corporate and private collections internationally. David Griggs has been represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery since 2011.