Alex Cuffe

creo nova from Alex Cuffe on Vimeo.

Alex graduated from the Queensland Collage of Art in mid 2009 has been pursuing exhibitions and grantopportunities ever since. He was selected to participate in the Youth Arts Mentoring Program with the seminal Brisbane sound artist Joel Stern as his mentor. Together Alex and Joel have formed a collaborative performance based sound art project called ‘Sky Needle’ which also includes respected Brisbane sound artists Ross Manning and Beh Wattenberg. Sky Needle has received an opportunity with Independent Exhibitions to exhibit the project with assistance from advisor, Danius Kesminas, a well established visual artist and creator of Punkasila. Alex recently finished a studio residency and first solo exhibition in Cairns at Crates 59 in July 2009. In July 2008 Alex established an Artist Run Initiative SPEC Temporary Spaces in South Bank, Brisbane. The goal of SPEC was to provide a flexible urban gallery space for emerging and unrepresented artists. The Space produced 25 exhibitions with such artists as Angela Rossoti, Eric Bridgeman and Rebeca Ross. Alex’s current Artist Run Initiative, The Wandering Room, recently received an Arts Queensland grant to present a series of exhibitions in the window box at Raw Space Gallery which is expected to start in December 2009. The Wandering Room in association with David Spooner and Rebeca Ross will collaborate on In_Sect, an exhibition for ARC Biennial and opening on the 13 November and is expected to tour regionally.

BENJAMIN KOLAITIS

http://benjaminkolaitis.com/

Benjamin Kolaitis is a Melbourne based sound and sculptural artist. He currently works with electronics and programming in developing sound sculptures invented instruments and improvised performances. Ben is also one of the head curators for the Handmade Music Festival (www.handmademusic.me).

Conceptually Ben’s focus is to engage the audience to interact with new forms of gestural control and interactive tools such as fruit, light, graphite drawings and touch contolling sound, light and video through handmade MIDI gestural controls. A key feature of his work is play. Play is the foundation for his innocent inventions.

Ben has created these sculptures and unique handmade electronic instruments for Next Wave festival, Make it up club, handmade music festival, Liquid Architecture and the Melbourne Fringe festival.