Shaun Gladwell
(b. 1972, Sydney, New South Wales. Lives and works in Melbourne)

Shaun Gladwell works across a range of media, from painting and photography to installation and performance, but he is best known for his video and extended reality (XR) works dealing with the human body in motion. Whether focused on skateboarding, surfing, street dancers or circus performers, Gladwell’s work centres the body of the performer in relation to the natural or built environment around them.

For Melbourne Now, Gladwell presents a major commission that takes his career-long inquiry into the human body to dimensional extremes. Passing Electrical Storms is a participatory XR experience with a deeply affecting, ‘out-of-body’ nature. Gladwell simulates the experience of dying through XR and medical technologies. At once meditative and unsettling, this interactive work guides participants through a simulated de-escalation of life, from cardiac arrest to brain death. The experience of Passing Electrical Storms offers an arresting contemplation of the universes both within and beyond the body.

Born in Sydney in 1972, Gladwell rose to prominence as a member of the Sydney-based Imperial Slacks collective in the early 2000s. He has since shown in major exhibitions around the world, and in 2009 represented Australia at the 53rd Venice Biennale. Public collections include the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide; Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Orange County Museum of Art, California; and Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. His Orbital Vanitas project was an official selection at the 2017 Festival de Cannes. In 2020, the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia presented Pacific Undertow, a survey exhibition spanning two decades of Gladwell’s practice.

Passing Electrical Storms was commissioned by the NGV and made possible with the support of a Research Partnership with Deakin Motion Lab, Deakin University.