Shayne Higson – Bio

Shayne Higson's 2004 show at Stills Gallery, Attachment, explored relationships dependent on the written word. Old letters and telegrams, letters to and from detainees, SMS text messages and romance on the Internet.

The work contrasts the poetry of letters from the past with the phenomenon of today's instant communication in the abbreviated language of the text message. In this increasingly technological world, we search for love in a way impossible to imagine in the past. Yet, despite the technological advances, some are forced to step back in time to establish relationships. Letters, most written using pen and paper, are the only form of communication between concerned Australians and asylum seekers held in detention.

The exhibition looked at the comfort of communication and the physical yearning we experience when we are separated from others, especially from those we love. Visual elements are merged with text to create intimate, impulsive, flirtatious and moving images.

New Horizons (2002). looked at the plight of asylum seekers in Australia, combining two bodies of work on the subject. In the first, Higson created poetic images in response to a desperate attempt for freedom. On the 10th of April 1999 her small hometown woke to the news that a large boat had come ashore carrying sixty people from China. On arrival they changed into suits, ties and good shoes and set off in an attempt to integrate with the local community, not realising how much they would stand out in the middle of the Easter holidays. Most were found, detained and deported back to China. Using suits and shoes cut out of the newspaper and photographed on the shoreline or floating in the water, Higson poignantly evokes the human lives at stake in this incident.

Later another far more tragic incident hit the headlines in Australia. In October 2001 over 350 people were drowned in the Java Sea while trying to reach Australia in an overcrowded, leaking fishing boat. In New Horizons Higson constructed another series using garments with the intention of retelling this story.

In May 2003 she won the prestigious Hermann's Art Award for her work Proof of Identity. Higson's work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane and Griffith University, Queensland as well as in private collections.