Born in 1960, John A Douglas is a Sydney-based interdisciplinary artist working across video, performance, live art installation, photo-media, sound and objects. His practice investigates his ongoing experience of chronic illness through scientific and collaborative, immersive performance approaches. Douglas offers a unique and personal perspective as both artist and patient that intersects with biomedical science, clinical treatment, and his own human and emotional experience as a renal patient. His work seeks to map a psychological geography of the patient subject, via the narrative structures of mythologies, as a parallel world of existence in which he cycles between places of healing, regimentation, wellness and suffering. Douglas is also interested in using cinematic references and mythologies, and his large-scale multi-channel video works pay homage to the vast landscape of cinematic history whilst articulating the inner world of the patient experience.
Douglas has been artist in residence at Museum of Human Disease at UNSW, Symbiotica Lab, at UWA, Fraser Studios and The Bundanon Trust. His live, duration dialysis performance installation Body Fluid was shown at Performance Space, Carriageworks as a part of ISEA 2013. In 2016, he produced an ambitious project titled Circles of Fire, first exhibited at Galleries UNSW in a group exhibition curated by Bec Dean, The Patient: The Medical Subject in Contemporary Art. The Patient is currently touring nationally over the course of 2017/18. He is currently in the development stage for a live performance installation of Circles of Fire in 2018.
Douglas is the recipient of the inaugural 2017 CreateNSW Artist With Disability Fellowship and has been the recipient of numerous Australia Council Grants including New Work, Creative Development, Artist Initiated Residency(AIR) and Arts Projects. His work has been represented by Chalk Horse gallery since 2008 and he has exhibited in Australia, UK, Germany and Spain. His work has been acquired into notable private and public collections including Cato Council and Artbank. Douglas has been a finalist in numerous art prizes including The Blake Prize, Fishers Ghost Prize, John Fries Viscopy Prize, Bowness Photography Prize and the Josephine Ulrick photography prize. His work has also been featured in numerous publications and on radio and television.
Douglas is a freelance artworker and educator for emerging, mid-career and established artists and has over fifteen years experience working in the regional arts sector, galleries and arts organizations.
www.johnadouglas.com.au/