Tony Schwensen
Tony Schwensen’s practice charts the territories of social exclusion, tedium, humour and existential absurdity. By drawing these elements together he creates a space for dialogue, and questions underlying dissension between politics and contemporary life. Through a rigorous conceptual practice, Schwensen highlights the repetition of history, its life and death. Schwensen’s sculptures, performances, and writings identify and criticise the impossibilities of freedom and the ever-present impositions of subjugation. At once robust and meditative, cruel yet elegant, serious yet often humorous, Schwensen’s practice is an indispensible and unique examintaion of society, teasing out its discrepancies and writing them back into the discourse. Since Schwensen’s relocation to Boston, USA in 2007, his practice has focused predominantly on the notion of American Exceptionalism.
Tony Schwensen was born in Sydney, Australia in 1970, and relocated to Boston, USA in 2007 where he currently lives and works. From 2008 - 2016, Scwhensen was a full time lecturer at the Performance School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has exhibited work since the late 1980s across America, Asia, Australia, Europe, and New Zealand in numerous significant exhibitions including: Just Not Australian, Artspace, Sydney (2019); International Festival of Radical Performance, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, Iran (2017); Resistance in the age of Global Capital, Kolkata International Performance Art Festival, Kolkata, India (2017); How the Body Traces Language and Culture: Profiles of Performativity, Dhaka Live Art Biennale, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2017); Borders, Barriers, Walls, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2016); Indicating Boundaries, 4th International Live Art Conference, University of the Arts, Helsinki, Finland (2013). Schwensen's work is held in public and private collections internationally, including Estamps des arts Collection kabinet, Musee d’Art Moderne et Contemporaine, Geneva, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; and Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Australia.