Opening 5 – 7pm Friday 6 June
The Leading Hand consists of a body of painting and sculptural works investigating the transformative impact of screen technology. The works focus on thresholds and moments where screens blur into landscapes, highlighting the evolving relationship and perceived contrast between physical and digital realities. The exhibition aims to foster a nuanced perspective on our interaction with these technologies in public and private environments.
The works presented in the exhibition merge screen and landscape. The three-dimensional pieces physically manifest the spaces where screen technologies extend beyond their physical forms, including the spaces where their light radiates, data interfaces and networks exist. Through themes of congestion and inundation, the works depict the fragmentation of contemporary urban environments in the 21st century—both online and offline and questions the experience of contemporary urban life.
Mediums such as plaster, concrete, pigments, and mixed media (including digital technologies like television screens) will be used in the creation of these works through techniques of assemblage and casting.
Rhys Cousins Bio
Rhys Cousins is a Melbourne artist who brings a landscape sensibility to an arts practice working across painting, sculpture, installation, and digital screens. Cousins’ practice delves into the phenomenology of landscape, through process as a driving enquiry into qualities of diversity, change, and variation. He has been a finalist in the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, 2024 and has been a finalist in numerous art prizes including the Sunshine Coast Art Prize 2023 and Footscray Art Prize 2023. Cousins has exhibited solo and as part of group shows across Australia.
Rhys is a practice-based PhD candidate in the School of Design at RMIT University.