Snap out of it

Some people just snap.

Some people take snaps. 

Most people just snap out of it.

—Destiny Deacon, June 2014

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Destiny Deacon is an artist, performer and political activist and has exhibited nationally and internationally since 1990. In 2005 the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney held a major retrospective of Deacon’s work titled ‘Walk & don’t look blak’, which toured to the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, the Tjibao Cultural Centre, Noumea, New Caledonia and Wellington City Gallery, New Zealand. In 2002 Deacon was chosen for ‘Documenta II’ in Kassel, Germany and she has been included in many other important survey exhibitions such as the Havana Bienal in 2009 and 1994, the Biennale of Sydney in 2008 and 2000, the inaugural ‘National Indigenous Art Triennial 2007: Culture Warriors’ at the National Gallery of Australia, the Yokohama Triennale in 2001, the Adelaide Biennial in 2000, the Australian Perspecta in 1999 and 1993, and the 1st Johannesburg Biennale in 1995.  Deacon has been selected for the Dong Gang Interational Photo Festival opening in July in Korea. In August, she will feature in the 2014 Tarrawarra Biennale, curated by Natalie King and Djon Mundine. Other group exhibitions include ‘Melbourne Now’, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne in 2013,  ‘Rising Tide: Film and Video Works from the MCA Collection’, Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego 2009,  ‘Half Light: Portraits from Black Australia’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2008, ‘Yours, Mine & Ours: 50 years of ABC TV’, Penrith Regional Gallery 2007; ‘Why Pictures Now’, Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK), Vienna in 2006; ‘Image & Imagination’, Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, Canada in 2006; ‘High Tide: Currents in Contemporary Australian Art’, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw in 2006 and Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania. Deacon’s work is held in most major public collections in Australia as well as Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK), Stifting Ludwig Vienna, Austria and Museum Sammlung Essl, Austria.

Virginia Fraser is an artist, writer, editor and curator. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Media Arts) from Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne, and a Master of Fine Arts by research from the Victorian College of the Arts. Her art practice consists mainly of video and installation works, often made in collaboration with Deacon. Fraser edited A Book About Australian Women (1974) and Screw Loose: An Uncalled for Memoir by Peter Blazey (1997).