Head of Critical and Theoretical Studies at the Victorian College of the Arts, Dr Sean Lowry’s art mixes media, twisting the visual, aural and written word together.
For Dr Lowry, an experience of a work of art is not necessarily tied to a singular object, location or event. Indeed, it might be accessed in numerous ways – through a book, a performance, a video, a song, a radio play, or as an aggregate of elements.
Dr Lowry describes his work as “conceptually driven” and often works outside traditional exhibition spaces. He works across multiple mediums, from image to sound to performance, and often collaboratively. His work challenges us to reconsider where and when we might encounter art.
Widely published and exhibited both nationally and internationally, Dr Lowry’s artistic practice “employs strategies of concealment, subliminal quotation, erasure, remediation and intermedial expansion to explore the outermost limits of the world of a work of art,” he says.
He is also Founder and Executive Director of the innovative global exhibition model Project Anywhere and one half (with Ilmar Taimre) of The Ghosts of Nothing. Both of these projects forgo convention by existing outside the traditional exhibition circuits.
Dr Lowry believes that “art is central to broader cultural and political discourse and can perform an important role in the ways in which we understand ourselves and the world that we live in.” As a teacher, he reminds his students to carefully consider from where and when they are looking, making and experiencing art. Accordingly, he seeks to “encourage students to critically navigate their own creative pathways.”