'Semelparous', 2020, Joey Holder
Artist Talk and Q&A: Joey Holder
Joey Holder is a visual artist, producer & mentor. She has exhibited widely in the UK & internationally including the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Athens Biennale, Design Museum, Moscow Biennale, Transmediale & Venice Biennale. Her artwork is fuelled by continued dialogue and collaborations with researchers & practitioners from varied fields. She creates fictional worlds & constructed environments that respond directly to contemporary, real world events. Each artwork is considered a ‘set’ with filmic, narrative, architectural, visuals & sound elements created uniquely for the conceptual underpinning of the project. She has worked with computational geneticists, marine biologists, behavioural psychologists & investigative journalists where my artwork has addressed themes including future farming, synthetic biology and deep sea ecosystems.
Joey Holder’s work raises philosophical questions of our universe and things yet unknown, regarding the future of science, medicine, biology and human-machine interactions. Working with scientific and technical experts she makes immersive, multimedia installations that explore the limits of the human and how we experience non-human, natural and technological forms. Mixing elements of biology, nanotechnology and natural history against computer programme interfaces, screensavers and measuring devices, she suggests the impermanence and interchangeability of these apparently contrasting and oppositional worlds: ‘everything is a mutant and a hybrid’. Connecting forms which have emerged through our human taste, culture and industrial processes she investigates complex systems that dissolve notions of the ‘natural’ and the ‘artificial’. GM products, virtual biology and aquatic creatures are incorporated into an extended web; challenging our perception of evolution, adaptation and change.
Joey Holder is the Director of Chaos Magic, an artist-run space in Nottingham and the Director of SPUR an online artist development programme.
Solo exhibitions include: Abyssal Seeker, Seventeen, London (2021) and FUTURA, Prague, Semelparous, Offspace, London (2020), Adcredo - The Deep Belief Network, QUAD, Derby, Matt’s Gallery, London, and Bloc Projects, Sheffield (2018); Selachimorpha, The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2017); Ophiux, Sonic Arts, Amsterdam, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2016), and BioSTAT, Project Native Informant, London (2015).
Group shows include: British Art Show 9, touring UK, Iskra Delta, 34th Ljubljana Biennale, Slovenia, ANTI, 6th Athens Biennale (2018), Joy Before the Object, Seventeen Gallery, London (2019); Cursed Images, Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer, Vienna (2019); Future Love, HeK, Basel (2018); Inside Intel, The Centre for Investigative Journalism, London; Transcendental Forest, 7th Moscow International Biennale for Contemporary Art, Moscow (2017); Beyond the Liquid Horizon, le lieu unique, Nantes; SITUATIONS/Post Fail, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur (2018); r u still there?, House of Egorn; Alien Matter, transmediale, Berlin; Materialising the Internet, MU, Eindhoven (2017).
Her work has been covered in ARTFORUM, A-N, AQNB, Art Monthly, BOMB magazine, DAZED DIGITAL, Elephant, Flash Art, Frieze, The Guardian, It’s Nice That, OFLUXO, Rhizome, SPIKE, thisistomorrow, Time Out, and VICE.
Event to be livestreamed, join the stream here.