Sydney Exhibition

Opening Event Saturday 3 May
Runs 1 – 11 May 2025

Highlighting April Mountfort’s post-graduate exhibition in May 2025

April is a Sydney based artist born in New Zealand. As a young adult April moved to Australia to undertake a number of national and international short art courses that led on to full-time study. In 2021 April was awarded a Bachelor of Fine Art (Hons) from the University of New South Wales, and is currently about to complete a Master of Fine Art (Research) at the School of Art, Design & Architecture, UNSW.

Her current practice includes expanded installation with intersecting video, sculpture, and painting elements. Beautiful Vulnerability is April’s final presentation towards her MFA (Research) Degree.

Artist Statement

Beautiful vulnerability

This project uses puppetry and video art to champion the relationship between inherent human vulnerability and control, to reveal more beautiful engagements with vulnerability and its intangibility. I interrogate vulnerability as an inherent quality within humans; a situation of life not readily recognised nor easily defined, perhaps being inarticulable or even intangible. While many types of vulnerability exist, attributable to wide-ranging conditions and events such as domestic violence and environmental crises, my practice-led research through video-presented puppetry performance explores qualities of vulnerability embedded within human lives, towards discovering beautiful engagements with it. Like beauty or the sublime, I explore human vulnerability as an abstract and hard to hold event, yet one possibly to be treasured.

In Beautiful Vulnerability I create conceptual narratives by making and performing with life-sized puppets. I interrogate my presence as artist puppeteer and video-artist in sequences that allow audiences to feel vulnerable, empathise with the vulnerable. My project investigates how puppetry and videoart move away from their normative (re)presentational functions and are acts of becoming-present as an artistic expression itself.

Two paintings and prints of video stills are included in my exhibition.

A Beautiful Vulnerability trailer may be viewed at https://vimeo.com/1070708677