Daniel Peltz announced as Artist in Residence
Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) has a long history of offering international and national artists the opportunity to work as an Artist in Residence. The program was re-established after SCA’s move to the main University campus. In October 2022, Professor Daniel Peltz will be in Sydney to undertake his residency supported by the prestigious Gilbert Fellowship from the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC) and Sydney Environment Institute (SEI). Peltz will oversee an interdisciplinary creative lab for selected post-graduate students from SCA and present the inaugural Gilbert Fellow lecture.
Daniel Peltz is an experienced educator in the field of fine arts who has established a rich collaborative art practice that extends across continents. He comes to SCA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, where he is the Professor of Time and Space Arts with a specialisation in site and situation specific art. He was previously Professor of Film/Animation/Video at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA, and visiting professor of artistic research at Stockholm University of the Arts, Sweden. Peltz is also co-founder and artistic director of the Swedish artist-run organization Rejmyre Art Lab’s Center for Peripheral Studies.
I am very grateful for this opportunity to share my work with colleagues here at the University of Sydney, in person, and to learn about the work of others. There is still no substitute for physical presence, in certain respects that art knows profoundly.
Through public projects, performances and media installations, Peltz’s artworks explore social complexities. Peltz’s public projects have been included in a range of curatorial contexts, including Western Australian Museum’s spaced 2: future recall biennial, where his work explored the iron ore mining town of Tom Price, WA.
Peltz continued: “I don’t tend to think in terms of goals, more in terms of orientation. I am oriented towards deep curiosity, bridled and unbridled. The bridled curiosity of one who wishes to be worthy of the energies that brought me here, to grapple with what it might mean to be responsible for the 5-10 tons of CO2 emitted in my arrival, for example.
“And also, simultaneously, the unbridled curiosity, of the child in us all, that knows with light feet that existence simply is, that being here for this fellowship cannot be taken for granted nor honoured through anything but presence.”
“Daniel has a remarkable ability to see the significant in the insignificant, an artist of great intellect,” said Robyn Backen Senior Lecturer, Visual Arts, SCA.
Peltz’s current research project explores how waste is constituted, its responsibilities and what it might mean, as a socio-aesthetic gesture, to ‘clean it up’. Drawing from his ongoing project at the Rejmyre Glassworks in Sweden, where artists are addressing the post-industrial fall out of a glass factory and its impact of hundreds of years of contamination on site, structure and community – this visit will explore questions surrounding environmental remediation.
Peltz’s work has been exhibited in international solo and group exhibitions at institutions including the Western Australia Museum, Perth, Färgfabriken and Botkyrka Konsthall in Stockholm, Galleri F15 in Moss, Norway and Norrköpings Konstmuseum in Sweden.