Tricky Walsh
I think I was always on the path to become an artist. I don't ever remember a time when I existed separately to art.
I tried veering off it a number of times but it's a magnetic trail that I never manage to leave for long. I honestly cannot imagine life without it. It is how we communicate; it is how we notate history, how we contextualise ourselves. It makes us love and hate. It is both glue and oxygen.
My most impactful art experience?I haven't had it yet. If we're talking infinite possibilities, I'm holding out. But there have been many that have come close. Some of them absurd - watching old rich women navigate a Ryoji Ikeda exhibition in a private museum in Paris. Finding Nick Cave's sound suits, replicated in mural form in the 42nd street station in New York, a background to chaotic commuters swarming everywhere. Medieval wood carvings of entire worlds inside a walnut shell. Being able to spend time with Daphne Oram's early synthesizer, made by hand, falling to pieces in the London science museum storeroom. A million things made by nameless people throughout time. Everything to me is about the thing but also the context, the aftermath of seeing a beautiful thing and trying to continue on with life having seen it. The slippage of those realities being concurrent.
I've shown at Sawtooth a couple of times now, once with a bunch of others from Six_a ARI back in that day. Recently in another group exhibition looking at unconscious communication and the transference of information through unconventional means.
I always keep an eye out for what's happening at Sawtooth.
Biography
Tricky Walsh (They/Them) is a non-binary artist working in Tasmania, Australia, who works both collaboratively and in a solo capacity.
Their projects focus on both spatial and communication concerns in an increasingly speculative manner. They use a diversity of media (architecture, painting, augmented reality, sculpture, installation, sound, moving image, radio) to interrogate these broader themes.
Walsh has been awarded a Qantas Foundation Art Encouragement award and won the 2009 Hobart Art prize. They have been commissioned to make works for the ICA in Richmond, VA, the Museo Madre in Naples, Lagos Biennial, Abu Dhabi Cultural Summit, Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Mao Jihong foundation in Chengdu, Monash University Museum of Art, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Queen Victoria Museum and Art gallery and the privately funded Detached Cultural Organisation and was included in the 2013 and 2023 arts festivals, organised by the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania.
Walsh has been a recipient of numerous Australia Council and Arts Tasmania grants, and has undertaken residencies in London, New York, Virginia USA, Jogjakarta, China and Paris.
Most recently they opened the gallery Haus of Vovo, dedicated to the enabling of artist's visions, centered around installation and spatial practices.
Represented by MARS Gallery in Australia.
@tricky_walsh