Rosie Isaac
(b.1990, Naarm/Melbourne. Lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne)

Rosie Isaac is interested in art-making that imagines different material and social futures. Her research-based sculpture, writing and performance practice focuses on language as it is experienced in the body while reading, in relationships, and via social institutions.

Minor Revision (Lab Accident), 2022, explores the materiality of electricity as it is described through science, technology and embodied experience, in an attempt to dissolve the solidity of these categories. The video work challenges the dichotomy between the organic and the inorganic, considering how metallic elements are absorbed and used within the body and how our nervous systems function electrically. The work is part of a research project that explores how electrification has shaped social relations and political imagination.

In the film, small pieces of aluminium, plastic and the artist’s hair dance across a pink-hued backdrop under the influence of static electricity. Twenty-seven numbered texts appear sequentially, borrowing the form of a written ‘fill in the gap’ revision exercise. They begin by simply explaining the science of static electricity before making associative links to pollution, technology, plastic manufacturing and the body.

Isaac’s solo exhibitions and performances in Melbourne include eeeeeeeeeeeee at Flippy’s Gallery (2022); Intestine in My Eye at Next Wave Festival (2018); AGILE LIE at West Space (2017); and BACK WARD PLAY at Gertrude Glasshouse (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Person, Woman, Man, Camera, TV, curated by Chelsea Hopper and held at 99% and BLINDSIDE galleries, Melbourne (2022); Freedom of Sleep, curated by Anabelle Lacroix, Fiminco Foundation, Paris (2021); Reading Circles, curated by Rayleen Forester and Joanna Kitto for The Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives), Ace Open, Adelaide (2021); and I Will Never Run Out of Lies nor Love, curated by Nanette Orly and Sebastian Henry-Jones, Bus Projects, Melbourne (2019).

Minor Revision (Lab Accident) appeared in Community Hall on 26 Jun – 2 Jul 2023.

Film credits
Minor revision (lab accident), 2022, HD video, 8 minutes 38 seconds, courtesy of the artist