Linda Dement is an artist who has been working since the 1980s in a variety of media including photography, film, video and computer-based technologies. Her work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally since the late 1980s and she is the recipient of numerous awards and citations. Dement’s work has explored often radical subjectivities closely connected to feminism and emergent technologies.
Born in Brisbane in 1960, Dement studied photography at City Art Institute in the late 1980s where she developed her early interest in documentary photography into constructed studio based work. An early exhibition Fruits of the Flesh with Sarah Waterston at Arthaus Gallery, Sydney in the mid-1980s featured images of naked women and offal. Dement developed her skills as a studio-based photographer. In an interview with Paul Andrew, Dement recalled, “I totally loved the strict technical precision of (photography). I ended up mostly working in the studio with medium or large format cameras and studio flash. I could concentrate on light meter readings and the beauty of expensive well-engineered equipment, the maths of exposure and let the art take care of itself. It was freeing to have the mind obsessively ticking away with the technicalities and the wildest art could slip through almost un-noticed’ (Artist Linda Dement - Catching Light ISEA 2013 – Interviews, paulandrew-interviews.blogspot.com.au).
After graduating with a Bachelor Of Arts (Fine Arts] from City Art Institute in 1988, Dement began to explore the creative possibilities of emergent technologies such as the CD-ROM and early computing, exhibiting work at the ISEA in 1992, as part of the International Painting Interactive at SIGGRAPH '92 in Chicago and the Imagina, Electronic Arts Festival, Monaco, Monte Carlo Machine Culture, SIGGRAPH 93, in Anaheim, California. Reflecting on her move from photography to computer-based art, Dement recalled “…it was important and urgent for those on the periphery of mainstream culture to put their stories, their presence, into digital culture while it was still forming. There was a window. The space was in ways unformed, unmarked and open’ (paulandrew-interviews.blogspot.com.au).
Exhibiting extensively throughout the 90s and 00s, Dement was awarded a New Media Arts Fellowship in 1996 and a project grant in the Digital Futures Fund in 2010, both by the Australia Council. In 1996 she was awarded a prize for Best CD ROM, 9 at the Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival, Stuttgart, Germany, and twice awarded at the Harries Australian National Digital Art Award in 2005 and 2006. She has also completed residencies at the Power Institute residency, Cite des Arts, Paris and the Centre d’Art i Natura, Farrera, Spain, both 2007, and artist in residence at Artspace (2010) and the Bundanon Trust (2010 and 2013).
2011 Heart and Heaven in Chick Docs, NY Film Makers Co-op screenings, USA
2002 Titles for 60,000 Barrels, documentary, Director: J. Castle
1999 Come Back to my Place digital animation for exhibition Babe
1996 Smile, for screening on ABC TV during RAGE 1997
1994 ArtRage, screening on ABC TV during RAGE 1995
1993 Camera operator, So Few Bullets, Director: Jasmine Hirst
1992 Art Direction, Running, Director: Sorayah Touma, Sydney
1991 Technical assistant, Dreaming and Driving, Dir: Jane Parkes, Sydney &Perth
1989 Animator, Can't You Take A Joke, Director: Vik Dun, Melbourne; Performer/Collaborator, La Chingada, Director: Sorayah Touma
1987 Performer and grip Red Label, Director: Vik Dun, Melbourne; Film maker, super 8 film Heart, Sydney
1986 Assistant Art Director, With Inertia, Directors: J Hirst and M Medlin, Sydney; Film maker, super 8 film Heaven, Sydney.
2013 Awry Signals collaboration with Nancy Mauro-Flude for Niteworks; Bundanon Artists Trust, NSW; 50BPM collaboration with Kelly Doley for Catching Light, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney; Poison for Networked Artforms and Tactical Magic, Hobart
2012 Moving Forest 2012 London (collab. with Shu Lea Cheang & others); Chelsea College of Art Triangle Gallery London and netstreamed.
2011 Killing the Host, Siteworks, Bundanon Artists Trust, NSW NY Filmmakers Co-op: Chick Docs - I Hate You, Union Docs, 322 Union Ave. Brooklyn, NY 23/4/11; Genart_sys; A Window on Digital Culture, Australia Council, Sydney
2010 Bloodbath, live event collaboration as part of Bump Projects with Sydney Roller Derby League, Hordern Pavillion, Sydney; On Track, by collaborative group In Serial, showing in Biennale Cuvée, OK, Centre Contemporary Art, Linz, Austria
2009 On Track, by collaborative group In Serial, Rondosztuki, Katowice, Poland; Ends of the Earth collaboration with J Castle, SASA gallery, Adelaide; On Track, Thessaloniki Biennale, as part of collaborative group In Serial, State Museum Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece.
2008 Exquisite Corpus:Interacting with the Fragmented Body, Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, USA
Moving Forest (collab. with Shu Lea Cheang & others) Transmediale Festival, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin
2007 Five x Five, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney; Griffith Artworks Rage collection exhibition, Dell Gallery, QLD
2006 Gendertopia, Teknikunst, Arts House Meat Market, Melbourne; Body & Place, with Phil George, COFASpace, Sydney
The Harries Digital Art Award, QUT Creative Industries, exhibition of selected works (touring) QLD and Beijing
2005 The Harries Digital Art Award, QUT Creative Industries, exhibition of selected works, Brisbane; Flesh VS Machine, TekniKunst, Incinerator Arts Complex, Melbourne; Devastated, with Jasmine Hirst, Mori Gallery, Sydney
2004 Sister O Elektric Theatric Operation, with Nancy Mauro-Flude, Artspace Sydney & the Waag, Amsterdam; Sister O Ouija Board Divinations,translocal performances Columbia, Tasmania, Amsterdam and Sydney.
2001 Microwave Media Arts Festival, Hong Kong; Double Life, Generali Foundation, Vienna; Hybrid Life Forms,Netherlands Institute for Media Art, Amsterdam
2000 Cybercultures, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney and touring; Queer Trangressions, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane; Surface Tension,St Kilda Film Festival, Melbourne; SONAR festival, Barcelona; Inside/Out, IMPAKT festival, Utrecht, Netherlands; Terug van School, de Vleeshal, Middelburg, Netherlands
1999 Contact Zones, CD ROM exhibition, Cornell University, New York
1998 Une Ecologie pour des Media, Corps et Machines dans L'Ere Cybernetique, Cinema des Cineastes, Paris; <Compacts> CD ROM exhibition, École Régionale des Beaux-arts de Rennes, France; Impakt Festival, Pornography Kunstecentrum Begane Grond, Utrecht, Netherlands; Foldback, Napartji Multimedia Centre, Adelaide Festival of the Arts.
1997 Fotofeis, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Aberdeen, Scotland; European Media Arts Festival, Osnabruck, Germany; Techné, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts
1996 Sine Base, Kino Eye2, Film festival, Museum of Photography, Antwerp; Word Up Digital Arts Festival, Vienna; World Wide Video Festival, Den Haag, the Netherlands; Exit exhibition, Creteil, Paris, curator Michel Corbou Observatoire De L’Image; Pandemonium Festival of Moving Images, Cyber Cafe exhibition of CD ROMs & Internet sites, Institute Contemporary Art, London. Electra, New Media Exhibition & Symposium, Henie Onstad, Norway; 9th Stuttgarter Filmwinter festival, Stuttgart, Germany.
1995 Photography Biennale Enschede, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede, Netherlands; Dutch Electronic Arts Festival ’95 (DEAF95), Rotterdam, Netherlands; CD-Art Gallery, European Media Art Festival, curator Erkki Huhtamo; Electronic Art Exhibition, and New Art Marketplace, International; Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA), Montreal, Quebec; I really want to kill you but I can't remember why, with J Hirst & E Richardson, Artspace, Sydney; Perspecta '95, Art Gallery NSW; Berlin VideoFest, Multimedia Program, Germany
1994 Liever Een Cyborg Dan Een Godin, (exhibition during symposium), de Balie, Amsterdam, Netherlands; New Voices New Visions, exhibition of selected works, Paolo Alto, USA; An Eccentric Orbit (video) curator-Peter Callas, touring USA & Europe; Virtual Futures (exhibition during conference) Warwick University, UK; Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; Seduced & Abandoned: The Body in The Virtual World, (exhibition during conference), ICA, London.
1993 Imagina, Electronic Arts Festival, Monaco, Monte Carlo; Subcutaneous (Master's exhibition) CoFA Gallery, Sydney; Machine Culture, SIGGRAPH 93, Annaheim, California.
1992 Hard (with Jasmine Hirst), Syme Dodson gallery, Sydney; International Painting Interactive, SIGGRAPH '92, Chicago; Interactive Art Exhibition, Third International Symposium of Electronic Art, Sydney.
1989 A Fundamental Attack (with J Hirst) Holdsworth Contemporary, Sydney.
