David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton

We actively seek to connect with audiences by creating immersive works that reconfigure familiar scenes to create new meaning. Increasingly, our practice responds to issues such as the climate crisis, colonisation, and social alienation; and reflects upon our own personal complicity in the systems and cycles that drive the status quo. We are interested in the multifaceted and constructed nature of histories - personal, physical, cultural, and fictional - and the way that these histories are always intertwined, malleable, and perpetually shifting. Our work is heavily influenced by pre-cinematic optical illusions, traditional museum displays and theatrical magic. Much of our art takes the form of quasi-dioramas and models, incorporating elements of motion and optical phenomena. These objects and techniques have historically been used to explore existential questions. The dreamlike scenes convey familiar feelings and sensations, magnified by repetition and the constructed nature of the scene.

Our work is heavily influenced by pre-cinematic optical illusions, traditional museum displays and theatrical magic. Much of our art takes the form of quasi-dioramas and models, incorporating elements of motion and optical phenomena. These objects and techniques have historically been used to explore existential questions and supernatural possibilities. By appropriating iconic snippets from cinema or history, small fragments are re-staged within sculptural installations in order to observe and reconfigure familiar narratives. The dreamlike scenes convey familiar feelings such as anxiety and despair, magnified by repetition and the constructed nature of the scene. Central to our practice is a preoccupation with an in-between state: the twilight space between seeing and knowing, existence and absence, natural and supernatural, aspiration and action.