David Lawrey was born in Melbourne in 1973 and completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours at Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney in 2003. Jaki Middleton was born in Sydney in 1979 and completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours (2002) and a Master of Visual Arts (2008), both from Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney. Since 2005, David and Jaki have worked collaboratively on a number of projects.
The artists’ collaborative practice draws on popular visual culture, art history and cinematic traditions to create works that engage the viewer via optical phenomena, juxtaposition and repetition. Incorporating sculpture, photography, pre-cinematic optical devices and museum inspired displays, their works appropriate iconic snippets of film and video art; re-staging these fragments in new visual contexts in order to observe, break-down and reconfigure familiar narratives.
Recent exhibitions include Time Trap at Firstdraft (2009); The wayback machine at MOP Projects, Sydney (2008); Vertigo, Gosford Regional Galley (2009) and Perth Institute for Contemporary Art (2007); and Eyes, Lies and Illusions at the Australian Centre for Moving Image, Melbourne (2006-07). In 2007 the artists completed a New Visions commission for Experimenta Playground, which is currently touring nationally. Both David and Jaki are involved with the Australian contemporary art magazine runway, David as the Assistant Editor, and Jaki as the Managing Editor. They were awarded an Australia Council New Work (Emerging) grant in 2006.