ABOUT

Monte Masi is an artist and writer who makes performances, videos, and text works which examine the labour of looking and the ways we look together: from the cool contemplation of the gallery space to the hot stare of the mobile browser.

Tracing the contours of exhibition practice, he misperforms scripts, improvises scenarios and uses humour to create cover versions and bad copies of art world language forms: performing artist talks, image lists and residency applications. These are reimagined as sites for an expanded, more fantastical vision of what being critical actually is, or could be.

Monte’s work examines the conditions under which creative labour is performed and distributed in our contemporary image-saturated, data-driven environment. He is fascinated by our encounters with waste, excess and saturation in online worlds: “one weird tip” chumbox advertising, unreadable images, algorithmically attractive psychobabble and broken web links.

Recent performances and projects include taking a drink of My Self, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental; Goddess Ball's Fun House, Vitalstatistix Adelaide; llllllllllllllllllll (twenty lower-case L’s), Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art; and Born as part of Transcriptions, presented at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Recent digital commissions include ZOOMLORD for fine print issue 22: interiors as well as script development and voice acting for the science fiction comedy radio show Extra Extra Radio for NTS Radio.

Collaborative and curatorial projects include dramaturgy for Grace Marlow’s Hot Body at Vitalstatistix, Adelaide; Fulfillment Centre at The Mill Adelaide; and Work in Progress: Investigations South of Market (as part of Stadium Projects) at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco.

Monte has undertaken residencies at Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, Canada; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Next Wave festival, Melbourne; Vitalstatistix and The Mill, Adelaide. He was co-founder and co-director of artist-run gallery FELTspace from 2007 to 2010.

Monte holds an MFA in Social Practice from California College of the Arts, as well as visual arts degrees from the University of South Australia. He is the recipient of several awards and fellowships including The Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Fellowship, John Crampton Travelling Scholarship and Jarislowsky Outstanding Artist award. In 2018 his work was featured in the book What is Performance Art? Australian Perspectives edited by Adam Geczy and Mimi Kelly and published by Power Publications Sydney.

Monte lives and works on Tartanya-Adelaide and teaches at Adelaide Central School of Art. He can be found at contactmontemasi@gmail.com.

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An alternately arranged abbreviated history can be found here.