Emily

Parsons-Lord

On the land of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation, Award-winning artist Emily Parsons-Lord makes visually stunning, embodied installations and performances. They elicit wonder and provoke critical re-examination of some of our most fundamental materials: air and explosions. These materials of the climate crisis speak to both the invisibility and the spectacle of collapse, and the confluence of personal and environmental catastrophe. 

Air is simultaneously local and global, encompassing the effects of breathing as well as the governance of polluters and policy-makers. Air is where what we jettison into seeming oblivion is caught and returned. It is a physical site, as well as a place to project our imaginations. An explosion is an extreme condition of air, a rapid state of transformation from one state to another. By shifting our experience of time to a geological timescale, the rapidity of change since the industrial revolution makes it clear that we are exploding. This is how it feels to explode. Through air and explosions Emily’s work interrogates the experience of witnessing this expanded unstable moment of multiple simultaneous catastrophes. It shifts in register and scale from the sublime to the relatable, humorous and queer.

Emily has built a national and international profile for her experimental practice, exhibiting at the Kunst Haus Wien 2022 alongside renowned artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Marina Abramovic, and Roman Signor, she featured in the Bristol Biennale, 2016, List i Ljosi festival Iceland, 2018, and the prestigious 4A Beijing Residency 2019, where she was mentored by Mr Shen Shaomin. Her TedX talk was selected for international editions, she was Art Collector’s no. 1 artist to watch in 2019. In 2020, Emily won the Churchie Emerging Art Prize.

Nationally, Emily’s work’s featured in Primavera MCA, 2016, NSW Fellowship Emerging in 2017/2021 at Artspace, Liveworks 2017 at Carriageworks, Performance Contemporary at Carriageworks 2018, Climate Century at Vitalstatistix, Adelaide 2018, the John Fries Award, Ravenswood Art prize, Blake Prize and was part of the opening exhibition at Bundanon Museum 2022.

Following her 4A Beijing residency in 2019, in 2020 she undertook a development exploring the explosion as a site of extreme political, emotional, and physical enquiry.

Parsons-Lord is currently working with different kinds of air, silica aerogels, gallium, distress pheromones, explosions, and the aesthetics of climate change. 

Email: e.parsonslord@gmail.com

Selected Exhibitions

Upcoming Exhibitions

2023   The Unseen, Blacktown Arts Centre, curated by Liz Chang

2024.     Raised to a pitch of ungovernable fury, The Wandering Room, Brunswick

2023-2024 Standing Still in Contracting Space, Abbotsford Convent

 2023-2024.    (development) It’s already happened, we’re just in the past, Sydney

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2019. Study for Explosive Times, Cementa, Kandos

2017-2018           There is nothing accidental or surprising about this, Vitalstatistix for Climate Century, Port Adelaide

2018                    Then Let Us Run (the sky is falling), in SENSE, Cement Fondue, Sydney

2017                    Things Fall Apart, The Future Leaks Out curated by Tulleah Pearce, Liveworks Festival, Carriageworks, Sydney

2017                    Trod by Beasts Alone, Wellington St Projects, Sydney

2016                    The Great Dying, Bristol Biennial: In Other Worlds, Bristol, UK

2015                    Our Fetid Rank (Margaret Thatcher's bottom lip and Bill Clinton's tongue),   Firstdraft, Sydney

Selected Group Shows & Festivals

2022 Every essence of your beloved one is captured forever, From Impulse to Action, Bundanon Museum, curated by Sophie OBrien

2022 When the Wind Blows, Kunsthaus Wien, Austria

2022 A Great Shock of Brilliant Hairs Thrilled the Sky, NSW Visual Arts Fellowship, NAS Gallery

2022 Standing Still, Blake Prize - Finalist

2022 Standing Still, Kyneton Contemporary Triennial, Kyneton, VIC

2020 Standing Still (with practice, one can learnt to accept the feelings of groundlessness), Churchie Emerging Art Prize, IMA Brisbane

2020 When you cut into the present, the future leaks out, in Secret Garden, Dominik Mersch, Sydney

2019 A Study for Explosive Times, Cementa, Kandos, NSW, with Sara Marowetz

2019 A raging event of continual noise (the Sun), List í Ljósi Light Festival,  Seyðisfjörður, Iceland

2019 When you cut into the present, Anthropocene Noir, CAT, Hobart, Tasmania

2019    Our Fetid Rank, A Broken Link, Filmwinter: Festival of Expanded Media, Stuttgart, Germany

2018                     A Troublesome Itching, John Fries Award, finalist, UNSW Galleries

2018                     Rubbernecking (the last gasps from underfoot), Sydney Contemporary, performance, curated by Jeff Kahn and Tulleah Pearce

2018 . If you cut into the present the future leaks out, Galerie Pompom, in Possible Dream Theory 2, curated by George Adams, Sydney

2018                     A raging event of continual sound (the Sun), Lee Kun-Yong: Equal Area, 4a, Sydney

2018                    The Confounding Leaving, Tactile, Penrith Regional Gallery, Sydney

2017                    NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging), Artspace, Sydney

2017                    Our Fetid Rank (Margaret Thatcher's bottom lip and Bill Clinton's tongue) A BROKEN LINK curated by Sam Ferris, Golden Age                                     Cinema, Sydney & Central St Martins, London

2016                   Our eyes were of no use to us  &  The Confounding Leaving, Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

2016                    You Changed My World, Trev, MCA GeNext, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney

2016                    Under pressure gas becomes light and heat, Fisher's Ghost Award, finalist, Campbelltown Arts Centre

2016                   Magic Yellow Orchestra, MCA ARTBAR CURATOR (Co-curating with Pia Van Gelder and Danae Valenza), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 

2016                   Our Fetid Rank (Margaret Thatcher's bottom lip and Bill Clinton's tongue), Sydney Film Festival HUB, Lower Town Hall, Sydney

2016                    Picturing the Invisible, TedxYouth@Sydney, Sydney Opera House, Sydney 

2016                     One of your 8,935,200 a year, Ever Fresh, STILLS gallery, Sydney

2015                     ‘The Airrarium’, Underbelly Arts 2015, Cockatoo Island,  Sydney

2015                     ‘You will always be wanted by me’, 2015 Proximity Festival, AGWA,  Perth

2015                     'Advertising Marketing Publicity', This Is Not Art festival, Newcastle

2014                     ‘Different Kinds of Air, A Plant’s Diary’, 2014 Proximity Festival, Fremantle

2014                     ‘Stage 1’, Breath of Venus, Breath of Mars, ArtLaab, Perth, WA

2009                    ‘Endangered’, Extra Cheese, Saatchi and Saatchi Gallery                 

Collections

Artbank, Australia

Private Collection, Sydney

Grants, Awards, Residencies

Selected Education

2018 - 2021 PhD UNSW A&D, supervision Lindsay Kelley

   2010 - 2011 Masters of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, Graduation with Special Merit

   2009 Honours in Photomedia, College of Fine Arts, UNSW, First Class

   2003 - 2006 Bachelor of Digital Media, Majoring in Photography, College of Fine Arts, UNSW, Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence