Justin Balmain

Justin Balmain’s practice employs a research-based approach that addresses language and communication. His dominant medium is film with installation outcomes, often working with collaborators, performers, producers, artists, and writers, for the realisation of projects. His works have addressed varying networks and structures that affect the shifting ways communication occurs, particularly in the context of internet and smartphone communication, as well as social and legal usages concerning language. Most recently, Balmain’s projects are using modes of documentary as a means to fold truth and fiction within his outcomes.

Weaving together scripted narrative and observational sequences, Justin Balmain’s Cementa17 project draws upon the local landscape to address dislocation with the natural world. Working from a script that was developed prior to and during filming in Kandos, artist Annabelle Wass performs a character with an unspecified past, at odds with her environment. Her meaningful relationships to the ‘world’ are mediated. She exists in limbo. Connectivity is achieved via devices, rather than through real experiences.