View more on Dr Brigita Ozolins in WARP

Expertise

Brigita's research is concerned with visually exploring the paradoxical nature of the relationships between language, history, bureaucracy and identity, principally through installation, performance and digital media. Her art practice harks back to the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and has developed through an engagement with post-structural theory and literature. Her projects have become increasingly complex and cross-disciplinary, often involving collaboration with other experts such as sound engineers, builders, animators and architects. All of her projects aim to challenge perceptions about our relationship to language and the histories and systems that govern our lives, and contribute to a field of contemporary art practice concerned with similar ideas. Brigita has a growing national and international reputation for creative work in this field, particularly projects that are directly associated with literature and libraries.

Research Themes

Brigita's research aligns with University's theme of Creativity, Culture and Society. It is concerned with visually exploring the paradoxical nature of the relationships between language, history, bureaucracy and identity, themes that stem from her interests in the symbolism of the book, the word and the library. To convey her ideas, Brigita uses a wide range of materials including books, handwriting, video, digital imagery, sound, furniture, office equipment and signwriter's vinyl. Her work usually takes the form of installation, is often text-based and site-specific, and sometimes incorporates ritualistic writing performances.

Brigita's art practice harks back to the conceptual art movement of the 1960s and has developed through an engagement with post-structural theory and literature. The key idea informing her work is that language is a powerful cultural and social tool that both shapes and restricts who and what we are and how we think. On the one hand, language enables the sharing of ideas and perceptions about the world, but on the other, it is not an accurate reflection of reality. It is this inherently paradoxical relationship to language that underlies the focus of Brigita's research and experimentation in the studio. As a result, her art projects often create environments that offer a series of opposing experiences: the obvious versus the mysterious, beauty versus anxiety, the rational versus potential chaos and, most significantly, the simultaneous promise and denial of meaning.

One stream of Brigita's work focuses on the aesthetics of the book and the ambiguity of the word, as in The Secretary (2014), Moira (2013) and My hands are tied (2000); another reflects her interest in the way bureaucracy manages information and manipulates the individual, as in Secure Content (2004), the series of installations that comprised her PhD submission), and more recently she has been exploring the links between ancient forms of writing and cryptography, as in Kryptos (2011) and Codex (2009). Alongside these explorations Brigita also creates work about lesser-known aspects of Tasmanian, Latvian and other histories, as in Grimstone and Savery: Australia's first novelists (2012) and Celojums/The Journey (2010).

All of Brigita's projects aim to challenge perceptions about our relationship to language and the histories and systems that govern our lives, and contribute to a field of contemporary art practice concerned with similar ideas, particularly projects that are directly associated with literature and libraries. All the works referred to can be viewed on Brigita's website: http://brigitaozolins.com/

Collaboration

Since 2014, Brigita has been working in partnership with Professor Ralph Crane from the discipline English in the School of Humanities, The Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office and Roar Film to develop prototypes of rich media editions of Australia's first novels, which were written in Hobart in the 1820s by authors Henry Savery and Mary Grimstone. She was also team leader for a collaborative project of national significance during 2013-2014 with Liminal Studio and Inspiring Place, being shortlisted to develop a design for Immigration Place in the Parliamentary Triangle in Canberra.

Awards

• 2014: Immigration Place Canberra design competition award (shortlisted)
• 2008: The Inaugural Qantas Contemporary Art Award recipient for Tasmania
• 2005: PhD, Searching for the Subject: new narratives through installation, Dean's commendation for excellence.1999: University Medal; APA (Australian Post Graduate Award) Scholarship to undertake PhD

Current projects

Brigita is currently developing a new body of work that extends ideas about codification explored in Kryptos (2011), her major work at MONA, and Codex (2009) a solo installation held at the Carnegie Gallery. She is experimenting with a combination of natural and man-made materials, sound and imagery to evoke the mysterious links between codification, literature and the natural world. The resolved work will be shown at Bett Gallery in early 2016. Brigita has a continued fascination for Australia's little known first novelists, Henry Savery and Mary Grimstone and has created a series of art works about their extraordinary lives over the last 9 years. She is pursuing funding to develop prototypes of rich media editions of the two authors' novels, with the aim of creating an interface that invites a new readership for old authors. The project is a partnership with Professor Ralph Crane from the School of English, The Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office and Roar Film. A proof of concept was created in 2014 backed by UTAS REGS funding.

Publications

Grants & Funding

Projects

Research Supervision

Since commencing Research Higher Degree supervision in 2008, Brigita has overseen six completions (3 PhDs and 3 MFAs) and is currently primary supervisor for 4 PhD candidates, co-supervisor of 1, and primary supervisor for one MFA. She is particularly interested in supervising candidates whose work is installation based, who work across disciplines, and who visually and theoretically explore themes associated with history, memory, language and cultural displacement.

Brigita's past candidates include Dr Lucy Hawthorne, who writes regularly for high profile art journals; Dr Amy Jackett who is a Lecturer at Charles Darwin University, and Scott Cotterell, a respected artist and IT expert at MONA.

Current

Completed