‘Shags’ is a Canberra based artist working across printmaking, drawing, zines, performance and projection. She often uses text, audio, humour and chance to make works that spruik empathy or alternative forms of communication.

Shags processes the information around her through a variety of visual means – she is dyslexic and experiences the perceptual phenomena synaesthesia, whereby stimulation of one sensory pathway can lead to another. She understands her environment in non-verbal ways – colour, sensation, intuition, noise and tactility. Thus words are not the artist’s first language and she has often expressed frustration by their limitations and the linear order they require to convey ideas.

The works exhibited here are non-figurative self-portraits were made on the floor with the artist writing backwards with the end of a paintbrush and using her bodyweight as the printing press. She sees the physical exertion of printmaking at this scale as a form of spontaneous choreography; a communicative dance that can be as misinterpreted as the tone of an email or a conversation without body language. The resulting marks capture the movement, immediate thoughts and presence of a person at a particular point in time; and ask the viewer to question their notions of what constitutes as portraiture and why they hold that belief. This is part of Shags’ ultimate aim; to encourage audiences to continue to ask questions, and to look at situations and viewpoints from other people’s perspectives.

Shags would like to thank the Goulburn Regional Art Gallery and the ANU School of Art and Design Emerging Artists Support Scheme for this opportunity.