Australian artists Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro have worked as a collaborative duo since 2001. They have lived and worked in Asia, Europe, North America and the Pacific. Their nomadic lifestyle, existing systems of transportation, packaging and portability, and the imaginary potential of what they find in these locations are key provocations for their art projects.
During their Te Whare Hēra residency Healy and Cordeiro created two bodies of work. Inspired by the expansive views of the harbour and wider landscape that the Te Whare Hēra studio afforded and by some of their favourite horror films, the first was The Wrong Landscape (2016), was a suite of meticulously hand painted CMYK dot scapes. The second series Daddy Danse Macabre (2016) celebrated the ‘awkwardness of aging cool’. In this work the artists decorated reproductions of human skulls in folk-gothic style, inscribing slang words dated with the year they first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Daddy Danse Macabre (detail). Resin skull, acrylic paint, 2016. Te Whare Hēra Gallery. Photograph courtesy of the artists.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Magnitude 7.8. Watercolour pen and acrylic on canvas, 2370 x 1000mm, 2016. Te Whare Hēra Gallery. Photograph by Jane Wilcox.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, The Quiet Earth. Watercolour pen and acrylic on canvas, 1750 x 980mm, 2016. Te Whare Hēra Gallery. Photograph by Jane Wilcox.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Daddy Danse Macabre. Resin skulls, acrylic paint, 2016. Te Whare Hēra Gallery. Photograph by Jane Wilcox.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Daddy Danse Macabre (detail). Resin skulls, acrylic paint, 2016. Te Whare Hēra Gallery. Photograph by Jane Wilcox.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Daddy Danse Macabre (detail). Resin skulls, acrylic paint, 2016. Te Whare Hēra Gallery. Photograph by Jane Wilcox.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Daddy Danse Macabre (detail). Resin skulls, acrylic paint, 2016. Te Whare Hēra Gallery. Photograph by Jane Wilcox.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Daddy Danse Macabre (detail). Resin skulls, acrylic paint, 2016. Te Whare Hēra Gallery. Photograph by Jane Wilcox.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, The Drag. Rover P6, 2-channel video, colour and sound, 28 minutes, 2015. Courtesy Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Future Remnant. Dinosaur fossil replica, cable binding, IKEA furniture, 2011.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Par Avion. Cessna 172 deconstructed and airmailed from Roma to San Francisco, 2011.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Lifespan. Installation, [175,218 VHS video cassettes are arranged to form a solid block in the deconsecrated chapel of a former nunnery. The combined running time of these cassettes, if played consecutively, would be 60.1 years, the average human life span in 1976 – the year that the VHS was released], 2009. Photograph by Ella Condon.
-
Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro, Same day service or sooner. Sculpture, MDF, cardboard, perspex, acrylic, tie-down ratchets, 2008.
For more information on Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro visit their website