make me fall where i stand

MAX BURGESS

Max Burgess (they/them) is a queer artist based in Ngunnawal and Ngambri Country (Canberra), whose practice spans the realms of contemporary dance, poetry, and dramaturgy.

Max views queerness at the heart of their practice. They aim to seek flexibility in the structures that exist; reorganising, reshaping them, so as to breathe new possibility through a metamorphosis of sorts. Within their writing and performance, a constant act of searching seems abundant. They seek to affirm the grey area, a nebulous spiritual and metaphysical field of their/our existence, emboldening a sense of power within a constant state of flux; befriending the immutable chrysalis.

LOUIS GRANT

Grant explores personal identity through methods of unbecoming, unmaking and undoing through the ‘queer art of failure’ to strip back the performance of self to find an authentic, raw and nuanced voice. Sentiments of love, loss, shame and celebration form material explorations in glass, delving into concepts of glass being queer.

Grant has worked as a studio artist since graduating in 2018, with a Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours) from the ANU School of Art and Design.

Grant has exhibited nationally and internationally, being selected in award shows such as Hatched National Graduate Show 2019, Klaus Moje Glass Award 2019, National Emerging Art Glass Prize 2020 and Talente 2022.

make me fall where i stand sits within a stage of infancy. We have not been working on this collaboration aside from a few email exchanges over the past months. Our intention with this collaboration is to allow the short process from gestation to delivery to function as part of the art. To be engrossed in the dynamics of meeting each other through imagery, context, narrative, and thematic content, to in turn produce make me fall where i stand.

Max Burgess: I’m most thrilled to have an opportunity the collaborate with Louis in what will be a very relaxed process. It feels so pertinent to my practice to collaborate with other queer artists. I also feel that this offers an opportunity to diversify where I can perform and how I can share my art. A maturing and elevating of sorts.

Louis Grant: This collaboration is so exciting to me to be able to push the boundaries of contemporary glass, sculpture and performance. Working with someone who shares a conceptual queer language is vital in building out my work into these experimental spaces, outside of traditional craft disciplines.