Australian artist Lauren Brincat is featured in issue #1 of Swill magazine, out October 6. Pre-order here.
Disruptive, loud, ethereal, wafty and always so very, very hungry
Lauren Brincat’s first piece of performance art was at age 11, when she spent a year with her nostrils pinched with a peg in an attempt to reduce the size of her nose. In high school, she made a performance piece by filling a guitar with paint and smashing it in the middle of the road.
Lauren Brincat will be the first one to tell you. She wants to be heard.
She recently wrote a music score for salt. “I’m obsessed with salt at the moment. I thought about what the sound of salt would be,” she says. “Basically, it translates to ‘being held for as long as it takes, and take as much as you need’.”
“It’s a very long, low noise, like ggggggggggsssssssssssssssssssss
ssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”
She’s a feeder. A noise maker. An artist. A sandwich fantasist. Always hungry, ever curious.
Her Carriageworks studio, a space she shares with nine other artists, is filled with remnants from past shows, such as 42 metres of sailcloth, a specially made church bell rope and soft, fluffy red woollen hand grips from her 2016 show, Salt lines: play it as it sounds. The same ropes feature in her work for 2021’s Dark MOFO, I wish to communicate with you.
“Please. There are snacks all over the studio. I don’t really sit and have a proper meal, bananas, nuts, a little sandwich, hummus… it just floats around the studio and I just eat constantly. Little bits. Or anchovies. It’s like when I’m working, I can’t properly eat. I just eat for fuel to keep going.”
“I can’t decide if I like food more than art or whether it’s the same thing. Probably the same thing. Just any excuse to gather people. I crave it.”
