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. The artists have worked collaboratively since 2005.
David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton construct sculptural works that incorporate motion, optical phenomena and repetition. Appropriating iconic snippets of film, photography and history, the artists re-stage these fragments within sculptural installations in order to observe, breakdown and reconfigure familiar narratives.
Recent exhibitions include Otherworldly at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Awfully Wonderful at the Performance Space, NSW; New Acquisitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Abandon Normal Devices at FACT, Liverpool, UK (both 2009) and Eyes, Lies and Illusions at the Australian Centre for Moving Image, Melbourne (2006-07). The artists are currently working on a series of sculptures and installations, for which they were awarded an Australia Council New Work grant in 2010.