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Biog Short

Sonia Leber and David Chesworth are known for their distinctive video, sound and architecture-based installations that are audible as much as visible. Leber and Chesworth’s works are speculative and archaeological, often involving communities and elaborated from research in places undergoing social, technological or local geological transformation. Their works emerge from the real but exist significantly in the realm of the imaginary, hinting at unseen forces and non-human perspectives.

Leber and Chesworth’s artworks have been shown in the central exhibitions of the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014); and a parallel exhibition of the 5th Moscow Biennale (2013).

Group exhibitions include 'Ecosystem Assembly', Casino Luxembourg Forum d'art Contemporain (2023); 'Melbourne Now', National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2023 & 2013); 'Who’s Afraid of Public Space?', Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2021-2); 
'Freedom of Sleep', Fondation Fiminco, Paris (2021); 'The Last Reader', annex M, Megaron, Athens (2018); 'The State We Are In: Collection of Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw', Galeria Labirynt, Lublin, Poland (2018); 'And Tomorrow And', Index–The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm (2018); 'The Score’, Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne (2017); ‘Looking at me through you’, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney (2017); ‘Call of the Avant-Garde: Constructivism and Australian Art’, Heide Museum of Modern Art (2017); 'I don't want to be there when it happens', 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2017); and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2017); ‘Borders, Barriers, Walls’, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2016); ‘Melbourne Now’, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2013-14); ‘Cooperation Territory’, 16thLine Art Gallery, Rostov-on-Don, Russia (2013); ‘Spaced: Art Out of Place’, Fremantle Art Centre (2012); ‘Stealing the Senses’, Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Zealand (2011).

Solo exhibitions include 'Where Lakes Once Had Water', TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville, Australia (2022) and Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra (2022); 'What Listening Knows', Messums Wiltshire, UK (2021); 'Architecture Makes Us: Cinematic Visions of Sonia Leber and David Chesworth', Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2018), touring to UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2019) and Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane (2019); ‘Zaum Tractor’, Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne (2014), and Gridchinhall, Moscow (2013); ‘The Way You Move Me’, Fehily Contemporary, Melbourne (2012); ‘Space-Shifter’, Detached/MONA FOMA, Hobart (2012), Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (2011), and Conical, Melbourne (2009); and ‘Almost Always Everywhere Apparent’, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2007).

Leber and Chesworth were awarded the Substation Contemporary Art Prize (2016); Gold Coast Art Prize (2014); and Screengrab International Media Arts Award (2014). They were finalists in the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (2021); Blake Prize (2016); Incinerator Art Award for Social Change (2016); and the Melbourne Prize for Urban Sculpture (2011). Sonia and David are honorary fellows in the School of Art at RMIT University, Melbourne.

The artists live and work in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia
www.leberandchesworth.com

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