Meet the Artist-Researcher: Jody Haines

Meet Jody Haines, our artist-researcher-in-residence at RMIT PlaceLab Brunswick from 17th-28th October.

Jody is an artist based in Naarm/Melbourne and a PhD candidate in the School of Art at RMIT University. Jody’s relational practice is built on Indigenous feminist (new) materialism – a combination of yarning, relationality, and standpoint. Jody is a proud descendant of the tommeginne peoples of northwest lutruwita (Tasmania).

A photo of a woman with short curly hair and a camera.

Jody Haines, by Jody Haines.

How do you describe your creative practice?

It’s a combination of social practice and photo media, but my most recognisable work is probably large-scale public activations, or what I call “big face in public space” work. My work explores themes of identity, representation, and the female gaze, looking for what radical possibilities can emerge when we centre care, respect, listening, and reciprocity at the heart of our work and relationships.

A close-up photo of a camera lens that turns what you're looking at upside down.
A photo of a studio with a dog.

Looking through the lens and her studio. Images: Jody Haines.

What has been the focus of your previous work?

I’ve used site-specific and relational methods to collaborate with local communities across Australia, developing projections, paste-ups, and street-wide photographic activations. Some of these projects include Women Dreaming for Women of the World & Festival 2018 (Gold Coast Commonwealth Games), Our People Our Place for Horizon Festival 2019, various iterations of #IAMWOMAN an ongoing relational portrait series, including Arts House 2019, Immerse Public Art Festival 2018, and One Night in Footscray 2018.

A gallery installation of photo panels above a table.
A close-up shot of a photo on a perspex panel.
A portrait of a black woman and child projected onto the Treasury Building.

‘Last Supper’, a gallery installation, and ‘Eye to Eye’ social portraits projected onto the Treasury Building. Images: Jody Haines.

Can you tell us more about your new project, Creative Sites of Resistance?

For the RMIT PlaceLab residency, I want to create a social portrait project for women* by women. (*female identifying, trans and non-binary persons) The working title is Creative sites of resistance: imagined futures. The project will become a photographic paste up within the Merri-bek area, accompanied by links to video vox pops produced with collaborators.

This approach for this project – as socially-engaged photography and video – is to respond to and critique the dominant visual narratives we see across our public spaces. It also explores the ways in which we maintain the active process of resistance and connection and still dream of radical possibilities in a COVID-19 reality.

The making will occur during 3-hour sessions, which include multiple cups of tea, conversation and future mapping. We will make performative self-directed portraits and a short video Vox-pop (one minute duration) on equality and the future, exploring gender inequity issues, feminist futures and the politics of representation, questions including:

  • How would you describe gender inequality?
  • Where is feminism now?
  • And how do we maintain the active process of resistance and connection and dream of radical possibilities in a COVID-19 reality?

The composite group image paste up is a performative future re-imagining – a potential site of resistance and a site of connection. The video Vox pops will form a video work on the future of feminism and how we maintain and create sites of connection and sites of resistance.

Thanks, Jody! We look forward to seeing your new collaborative project take shape in our studio.

Keep an eye out for a follow-up post on Jody’s residency.