Dissolving Worlds     :  The Brothers Gruchy

The exhibition features key artworks by brothers Tim and Mic Gruchy which focus on the intersections of technological innovations with biological forms, human perception, artificial intelligence, and synaesthesia. Since their childhood years in Bundaberg, the Gruchys have been insatiably curious about emergent innovations in image and sound technology. They have now worked in this field both collaboratively and individually for four decades, exploring the use of moving image, sound and the body not only in art contexts, but also club culture, theatre, opera, contemporary dance, musicals and commercial projects. An ongoing concern in their works is technology as a subject and a medium, where advances in automation, machinery and software can survey, traverse and mediate—as well as degrade and destroy—our bodies and the world around us. Tim Gruchy says: “This selection of works created in recent years highlight the passion Mic and I continue to feel when exploring the limits of new technologies through immersive and interactive works. We hope viewers will leave the exhibition with a renewed sense of curiosity and wonder in the beauty of our natural and constructed environments and their many possible futures.” Angela Goddard, Director of Griffith University Art Museum and the exhibition’s curator, says the works in Dissolving Worlds have particular relevance to contemporary audiences and explore subjects ranging from tides and flows of the great Australian rivers and oceans to the impact of development on the Moganshan region in eastern China. “From bodies captured by sensors and transformed into images using artificial intelligence software to the degradation of the decommissioned Baoshan steelworks in Shanghai, once one of the largest steelworks in the world, the Gruchy brothers explore sensuous visions of an enhanced and rapidly changing world, while also considering its dissolution in a technological environment characterised by hyper-communication and social networks.”