Artists

Mary Maggic

Grace Gamage

Curator

Lisa Campbell-Smith

Opening 4pm Thursday 9 June 2022

Dark Mofo: Thursday 9 June – Sunday 12 June & Wednesday 15 June – Monday 20 June 2022

Exhibition: 10 June – 10 July 2022

Contemporary Art Tasmania

As new modes of bio-hacking and self optimisation emerge, our complex role as meddler and creator becomes more hotly contested. Through installation, video and food, the artists in BioGym tame and modify organic matter, gym equipment, and chronobiological cake, serving up traditional recipes from synthetic supplements and local produce.

Presented by Contemporary Art Tasmania and Dark Mofo 2022.

Mary Maggic is a non-binary Chinese-American artist currently based in Vienna, Austria. Their work spans amateur science, public workshopology, performance, installation, documentary film, and speculative fiction. Since 2015, Maggic’s research has centered on hormone biopolitics and environmental toxicity, and how the ethos and methodologies of biohacking can serve to demystify invisible lines of molecular (bio)power. Completing a Masters from MIT Media Lab (Design Fiction research group). In 2017, their project “Open Source Estrogen” was awarded Honorary Mention at Prix Ars Electronica Hybrid Arts, and in 2019 Maggic completed a 10-month Fulbright residency in Yogyakarta, Indonesia investigating the role of Javanese mysticism in the plastic pollution crisis. Maggic is a current member of the online network Hackteria: Open Source Biological Art and the laboratory theater collective Aliens in Green, as well as a recent contributor to the radical syllabus project Pirate Care.

Grace Gamage is an interdisciplinary artist, farmer and boxing coach. Through her practice she attempts to adapt to new conditions within capitalism through critique and praxis. Over the past decade, Grace has presented work locally and nationally through often ephemeral and conceptual installations. Most recently Grace has co-founded Broom & Brine, a small no-till market garden that implements organiK farming practices, all the while habitually queering the economics of the farm from the field into the household. Grace is a boxing coach at Hobart Boxing and teaches the old school Soviet style.

Image: Mary Maggic