Mari Velonaki

Sydney based artist, Mari Velonaki, has worked in media art since 1995. For over 10 years she has created interactive installations that allow for immersive relationships to develop between the spectator and the artwork. These relationships are controlled by complex sensor-triggered interfaces which incorporate movement, speech, touch, breath, light, text and robotics.

Mari’s installations have been exhibited nationally including Artspace, Sydney, 2006; Experimedia, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 2004; Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth, 2004; Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Arts, 2003; Adelaide Biennial of Australian Contemporary Art, 2002; Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, 2002 and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 1999.

Internationally her work has been shown at; Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art, 2006; China Millennium Art Museum, Beijing, 2005; Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 2004; Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand, Wellington, 2002; ARCO, Conde Duque Museum, Madrid; European Media Art Festival, Osnabruck, Germany, 2001 and Ton-Build-Spektakel, Zurich, 1997.

In 2003 Mari was awarded a PhD in Media Arts at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, and has been the recipient of grants from the Australian Research Council. Mari has received grants from the Australia Council’s Inter-Arts Office and New Media Arts Board, and in 2007 she was awarded a two-year Visual Arts Board Fellowship.

Mari’s Fellowship project is to research and create an interactive installation titled The Woman and the Snowman, exploring the notions of perception, fallacy and visual ambiguity. In 2008 the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, Sydney will host the research for this project and Mari will travel to Japan to undertake further research at Osaka University in 2007. The work will be exhibited at key venues locally and internationally, and will be documented by an artist’s monograph and DVD.

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