Dr Sanne Mestrom
LEAD RESEARCHER
Senior Lecturer, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
Dr. Mestrom’s practice-led research seeks to incorporate “play” into a socially engaged practice as a means to question the social consequences of urban design. Her current research investigates ways that art in public places – and urban design more broadly - can become critically integrated, inclusive and interactive spaces. To do so, her projects bring together sculpture and the body to examine the role of art in rewriting current definitions of ‘play’ as relating to the physical, experiential and ideological conditions of ‘place’. Creating temporary and permanent sculptural forms that respond to the built environment and our movement through it, softens the separation of art and everyday life; it is through this ‘softness’ that play has the potential to open up a space to escape certain logics, and denying logic is itself a subversive – and therefore political– action.
Nadia Odlum
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
PhD candidate, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney
Nadia Odlum is a multidisciplinary artist, driven by a fascination with urban environments. Using a broad range of materials and methods, they create playful and immersive works that explore personal and collective experiences of urban life. Often working site-specifically, Odlum deploys queer curiosity to seek out new interactions and perceptions within urban space. Odlum’s work has been shown in galleries and public spaces across Australia and internationally. This includes presentations at the Art Gallery of NSW, Carriageworks, Artspace, Home of the Arts (HOTA) and MANA Contemporary USA, as well as public art commissions for Urban Art Projects and the City of Parramatta Council and pedagogical projects for Kaldor Public Art Projects and The Powerhouse Museum. Nadia Odlum is a past artist in residence at Parramatta Artists’ Studios Rydalmere, and a current PhD candidate at the University of Sydney.
This research is an Australian Research Council (ARC) project, funded by the Australian Government
Dr. Mestrom is the recipient of an ARC Discovery Early Career Award (DECRA) project number DE220100904.
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