Exhibits,
Jimmy Nuttall, Nick Smith, (on Island Island) What Do We Do Now
Jimmy Nuttall and Nick Smith have pursued a loosely collaborative practice for close to a decade. They have made clothes and boots together, they have exhibited alongside each other, Nick has played roles in Jimmy’s films and they have cohabited studio spaces. During lockdown, they have been sharing printed material via post (magazines, knitting patterns, photographs, A4 colour inkjet printouts, tourist pamphlets etc). This material has been used to produce collages that are sent back and forth between Jimmy in regional Victoria and Nick in Melbourne.
Their online exhibition takes its title from a fragment of collage, a still shot from gay porn where the actors’ subtitled dialaogue asks the question What do we do now? This is asked after all pleasure has been had and with a hesitant uncertainty about what comes next. Nick and Jimmy’s rolling scrapbook has been used as a frame for their desires, moving between the saturated and relentless capitalist gay imagery of their online algorithms and search histories, and the aesthetic worlds of homemaking, art history, romance (in all its meanings) and catholic iconography.
Nick Smith and Jimmy Nuttall both have individual and collective practices. They have engaged in collaborative residencies at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute and Metcalfe Shire Hall. In 2017 they co-presented an exhibition ’I am crying’ at Firstdraft, Sydney. Jimmy and Nick are both currently undertaking MFA’s at La Haute Ecole d’Art et Design, Geneva and ArtCenter College of Design, Los Angeles respectively. In 2019 they were both recipients of an Ian Potter Cultural Trust travelling scholarship. For now, they have returned to continue their work and study in Australia during the COVID crisis.