Born in Sydney in 1975, Lucas Ihlein moved with his family to Western Australia at the age of five and remained there until 1995 when he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Western Australia, Perth. In 1996 he returned to Sydney to complete his Honours year in Visual Arts at the University of Western Sydney. Although initially interested in painting and drawing, Ihlein found he was attracted to artworks that enable and adapt interactions between people. In 2003 he realised similar approaches to art making had been given the name Relational Aesthetics by French curator and critic, Nicholas Bourriaud. Relational Aesthetics refers to the creation of artworks through social interaction and communication, especially between artist and audience.
In 2000 Ihlein became a founding member of the SquatSpace Collective, a group of artists and activists who are engaged with 'the politics and pleasures of space in the city’ (http://www.squatspace.com/). In an attempt to make good use of empty spaces in Broadway, the collective occupied vacant buildings and set up a gallery called SquatSpace. Though evicted from the Broadway squats in July 2001, the collective continues to exist, with Ihlein an active participant. Early SquatSpace projects include unReal Estate at “This is Not Art” (2002), Newcastle, and the Squatters’ Handbook (2004), a guide for squatters produced in collaboration with Liverpool Library. SquatSpace is also the organizational structure that accommodates the Redfern Waterloo Tour of Beauty. This tour through the Redfern Waterloo area, developed in October 2005 as a project for the “Disobedience” exhibition at Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Paddington, seeks to act as a forum for voices of local residents in the urban environment. Contrary to the limited ideas of urban renewal claimed by the Redfern Waterloo Authority (established 2004), Tour of Beauty, according to Ihlein, sought to ensure that the full complexity of the urban situation be understood. In the three years since its inception, Tour of Beauty has been adapted for numerous festivals and exhibitions, including the Gang Festival (for bike riders) in 2006 and Cross Arts Projects, 2006. Ihlein was also involved in SquatSpace’s If You See Something Say Something project, exhibited in 2007 at the Mori Gallery in Sydney.
In 2000 Ihlein received a Development Grant from the Australia Council of the Arts to undertake a Milan Studio Residency, where he worked on small pieces of postal and rubber stamp art, as well as Hands Open Like Eyes, an artist’s book of drawings done with Ihlein’s left hand. During this time he also created his first web-based artwork, Random Sample, an online artist’s book influenced by the travel he did throughout Asia and Europe from his studio base in Milan. Ihlein sees this work as a precursor to his blog works, as this technology was not yet available.
Ihlein’s Bilateral series began in 2002 as an exploration into the creation of artworks developed out of interactions with people. At both the Found Project Space (Melbourne) and the Experimental Art Foundation (Adelaide), Ihlein lived in the gallery surrounded by past works, while exploring the relationship of the audience to his work and himself. Bilateral Kellerberrin (2005), which took place over two months at the International Art Space in Kellerberrin – a small town 200 kilometres east of Perth with a population of approximately 1000 – extended the idea of interactivity with audience by initiating an online blog to which local participants could contribute. In Bilateral Petersham (April/May 2006), in an attempt to replicate the isolated effects of Kellerberrin in an urban environment, he didn’t leave the boundaries of the suburb for almost two months.
Ihlein was awarded both the Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship for Emerging Artists and a run_way Travel Research Grant in 2003. He used these to visit Montreal, Berlin, Stuttgart and London to research two projects: the Fluxus artists network of the 1960s, and the early 1970s and the idea of expanded cinema – a phenomenon in which artists introduced live elements, such as performance, to the projection of a film. At the end of 2003 he held a video installation/performance Video Spell (actions) at the Performance Space in Redfern, Sydney. His interest in expanded cinema led to Ihlein’s association with the Teaching and Learning Cinema, Sydney, from 2006, as well as his participation in a re-enactment with Louise Curham of Anthony McCall’s Long Film for Ambient Light in 2007, also at the Performance Space.
Ihlein was also a founding member of the Network for UnCollectable Artists (NUCA) in 2004 and has since been a part of the NUCA E-List, a list open to anyone to share various types of information and opportunities in the arts. One significant NUCA project was BubbleGum Cards (2004), a set of cards featuring the 50 most uncollectable artists in Australia. Ironically, according to the NUCA website, the cards became collectable themselves and are held in the Wollongong University Art Collection. They were also a part of the MCA’s touring “Multiplicity” exhibition (2006-08) in collaboration with the University of Wollongong.
Ihlein is also one of the founding members of the printing co-operative the Big F.A.G. Press, which began in 2004, and in 2007 he was awarded a National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA) Marketing Grant to enable its promotion. His interest in text as artwork goes back to 2002 when he was a part of KeyPadPomes with Jane Simon at the Shoebox Gallery in Sydney where the pair explored the creation of text messages as postcard art.
In 2008 Ihlein worked with Fremantle Arts Centre on a project commemorating AC/DC singer, Bon Scott. Ihlein’s contribution was to develop the Bon Scott Blog (bonscottblog.com) and the electronic LED welcome sign.
Lucas Ihlein commenced his PhD in Creative Arts at Deakin University in 2005. In 2008 he was working at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney as an Education Officer, and continuing his work of initiating socially interactive artworks.
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