Amala Groom, Andrew Burrell. Juried Artist
Constellations
VR Program at QUT Kelvin Grove
Artist Statement
“The very thought of VR is the fuel for millions of late-night reveries about consciousness and reality.” – Jaron Lanier
“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see…” – Rene Magritte
“The whole world is a stage, and all the men and women are merely actors. They have their exits and their entrances, and in his lifetime a man will play many parts…” – William Shakespeare
Presented through the lens of virtual reality, ‘can’t buy me love’ is an immersive experience that purports to sell the audience the intangibility of spiritual enlightenment. It brings “reality” into a space that is “unreal” and where the item that is for sale is one that cannot be bought.
‘can’t buy me love’ was developed with support from The UTS Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building and the UTS Faculty of Law and as part of the 2021 UTS Artist in Residence Program.
About the artists
Amala Groom is a Wiradyuri conceptual arts and cultural practitioner whose work proactively seeks to dismantle the Colonial Project by asserting the argument that colonialism is not just disadvantageous for First Peoples but is, in fact, antithetical to the human experience.
Selected appointments include Power Institute Foundation for Art and Visual Culture; The University of Sydney: Nicholas and Angela Curtis Cité Internationale des Arts Residency Fellowship (2024); Create NSW First Nations Creative Fellowship w/ State Library of NSW (2022-24); University of Technology Sydney: Inaugural Artist in Residence Program (2021).
Groom’s work is held by Artbank; Blacktown City Art Collection; Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre; Charles Sturt University; Deutsche Bank; and Western Sydney University.
Andrew Burrell is a practice-based researcher and educator exploring virtual and digitally mediated environments as a site for the construction, experience and exploration of memory as narrative. Their ongoing research investigates the relationship between imagined and remembered narrative and how the multi-layered biological and technological encoding of human subjectivity may be portrayed within, and inform the design of, virtual environments. Andrew’s networked projects in virtual and augmented environments have received international recognition. Andrew uses creative practice to research and understand the complexities of emerging and speculative technologies and is particularly interested in how these are implicated in more-than-human ecologies. This is exemplified in the current and ongoing series of projects—”overGround:underStory”. Andrew is a senior lecturer in Visual Communication and a co-founder of the Critical Visualisation research group at the University of Technology Sydney.
Credits: Amala Groom X Andrew Burrell
URL: https://amalagroom.com/can-t-buy-me-love
https://andrewburrell.net/projects/cant-buy-me-love