About

Jacquelene Drinkall (Sydney, November 30, 1973) is a visual artist, writer, performer and curator working with a range of mediums to explore integral telepathies and telekinetics operating within the contemporary society of control.

She was trained in Painting at Australian National University (ANU), where she received Honours 1 and the ANU's University Medal. During this training, and continuing since, she has always worked with a individual technique of 'handwoven' telecommunications wire (aligned to lace making and fascinator construction as well as weaving). She continues to draw and paint, whilst working in installation, live and virtual world performance, EEG neuroheadset interaction, sculpture, objects, photography, videography, kinetics and audio. As recipient of an ANU Travelling Art Scholarship for exchange study undertaken as part of an ANU Individual Research Unit just prior to her Honours study, she studied at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris with Marina Abramovic (Clean House Project) and Krzysztof Wodiczko (Practical and Theoretical Course in Cyberspace). During her Masters by Research in Painting at ANU she received a nationally competitive award, The Marten Bequest Travelling Art Scholarship in the field of Painting, to conduct new research into telepathy, magic lanterns, animal magnetism and art in Paris, for which she also received two residencies at Cité internationale des Art, one awarded by Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) and one awarded by Madame Brunau of the Cite, as well the AGNSW's Dyason Bequest. This research also fed directly into her hybrid practice/theory PhD undertaken at the School of Art History and Theory, College of Fine Arts (COFA), University of New South Wales, where she submitted an 85 000 word thesis titled 'Telepathy in Contemporary, Conceptual and Performance Art' and a large exhibition titled 'The Soft Machine, The Influencing Machine.' 

Jacquelene was awarded an Australian Postgraduate Award stipend to complete her PhD, and received numerous COFA student awards, including the COFA Student Association Prize. She has recieved two Artspace residencies, a Firstdraft residency, two National Association for the Visual Arts awards and more recently she has recieved two Developing and Recognising Talent (DART) sponsorships for artistic research presentation and development in Istanbul, Turkey (2014) and Saas-Fee, Switzerland (2015). Jacquelene Drinkall was also the recipient of a full scholarship for the 2015 Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art, organised by Warren Neidich and Barry Schwabsky. Jacquelene is a keen collaborator, and has created work with virtual world performer and artificial intelligence researcher Jeremy Owen Turner (Canada); media artist and computer programmer Warren Armstrong (Sydney); and she has been working with artist, theorist and cognitive neuroscientist Warren Neidich on significant projects since 2013.