Jenny Fraser is a 'digital native’ who works within a fluid screen-based practice. Her work has been exhibited and screened internationally, including at “ISEA/Zero1” in San Jose and the “Interactiva Biennale” in Mexico. In 2007, Fraser received an honourable mention at the imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada.
Because of the diverse creative media Fraser uses, much of her work defies categorization. Her work takes iconic and everyday symbols of Australian life and places them into a context that questions the values they represent. With a laconic sense of humour she picks away at the fabric of our society, exposing contradictions, absurdities, and denial. Her practice has also been partly defined through a strong commitment to collaboration with others, leading to involvement with artist networks such as the Blackout New Media Arts Collective, a national body of artists, film-maker and designers.
Fraser is interested in refining the art of artist/curator as an act of sovereignty and emancipation. She has played a role in the development of Aboriginal media arts, founding cyberTribe in 1999. Fraser was the co-ordinator for the new media arts component of “Spirit & Vision” a Trienniale featuring 94 Aboriginal artists at Sammlung Essl in Vienna, and also part of the curatorial working group for the 2002 Adelaide Biennial titled “conVerge – where art and science meet”, a major survey of Australian new media artworks. In 2006 Fraser initiated “The Other APT”, an independent exhibition coinciding with and responding to Queensland Art Gallery’s 2006 Asia Pacific Triennial. The inaugural exhibition of “The Other APT” was held at Brisbane’s Raw Space Galleries. Fraser was then accepted for inclusion as an artist/curator into the 2008 Biennale of Sydney, and also toured “The Other APT” to the Centre Culturel Tjibaou in Noumea, New Caledonia.
Between 2003 and 2008 Fraser had more than eight solo exhibitions including “Not Really Queenz’land” at the NEWflames Studios, Fireworks Gallery, Brisbane (2003), “Murri All Stars” at the Tu Wai Indigenous Resource Centre, Whagarei, Aotearoa, New Zealand (also in 2003) and “Name That Movie” at Lismore Regional Art Gallery (2008). She has exhibited in group shows nationally and internationally including New Caledonia, France, Canada, Belgium, China and Japan.
As an artist-in-residence Fraser has travelled extensively and created works in collaboration with the Hermannsburg Potters of the Northern Territory, Kaurna Plains School in South Australia, the Coen Community in Cape York, the International Indigenous Art Residency at the Banff Art Centre, Canada, the Quarry in Whangarei, Aotearoa, New Zealand, and the NEWflames Studios Residency program in Brisbane.
She has served as a board member of the Australia Council’s New Media Arts Board, the Australian Network for Art and Technology board of management (2000-02), the Kummara Association (2005-08) and Uniikup Film and Media (commencing in 2007).
Among other projects, Fraser was awarded an Arts Queensland Creative Fellowship to produce a body of work that celebrated the lives of Yugambeh family members that were moved from their traditional homelands to work on properties on the Gulf of Carpentaria Peninsula. The work explored the art forms of installation, and was exhibited at the 2006 International Symposium of Electronic Art in San Jose, USA.
Fraser’s work is held in the permanent collections of the University of Wollongong, New South Wales; ART Station in Kollmitzberg and Sammlung Essl (both in Austria); the Kummara Association in Brisbane; the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service in Alice Springs; RMIT, Melbourne; the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney.
- Writers:
- Fraser, Jenny
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2011
