Jay YOUNGER

BIO

Jay Younger is a critically engaged Brisbane based artist, curator and academic and is Adjunct Professor at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Jay’s often satirical and absurdist artwork takes form as photo media, public art and multimedia installation with the purpose of interrogating the position and status of women and to ask questions about the human subject immersed in the conflicting agendas of politicised space.

During the repressive Bjelke-Petersen era, Jay collaborated with a group of young artists to build artistic infrastructure in Brisbane (including Queensland Artworks Alliance, Eyeline Magazine, and That Space) to block the drain of Queensland talent southward. Throughout her career, Jay has maintained a strong commitment to the values of artist run initiatives. As an educator she has been passionately dedicated to the development of many emerging artists’ careers.

Her artwork has been exhibited extensively both in Australia and overseas and is represented in major public gallery collections throughout Australia. In 1988 along with Paul Andrew and Lehan Ramsay, Jay formed AXIS ART PROJECTS and undertook “Does New York Exist?” a life-changing three-month Australia Council funded residency in NYC. Additionally, Jay has been awarded Australia Council solo studio residencies in Italy and the Philippines. She was a recipient of the $30,000 Arts Queensland Creative Fellowship and has also received new work grants from Arts Queensland.

Most recently Jay exhibited in; Hands Across the Pacific; in 2019 and was one of eight artists representing Australia at The Ningbo Museum of Art, China. She was awarded an Arts Queensland grant to create Meat Mirror, a performance activated multimedia temporary public art work, in collaboration with Lisa O’Neill. Meat Mirror—focused on the role of social media in the normalisation of cosmetic surgery—was exhibited/performed at Mappin’s Nursery and THE WALLS in 2021.