Artist's floor talk: Bailee Lobb, In Bathing, Bask

The first exhibition in WHAKAARI, our main gallery space, is an installation of large, brightly coloured inflatable sculptures, transforming the gallery into an immersive and playful environment. Visitors are invited to enter the textile ‘bubbles’ and move through or rest inside the intense colour and diffuse light of the undulating forms. The artist Bailee Lobb describes being inside these spaces as like bathing in pure hue – an experience conducive to increased focus, relaxation and bodily self-awareness.

Bailee Lobb is a queer, disabled artist born in Whanganui, Aotearoa. She is a founding member of the performance collective Show Us Your Teeth and served on the committee of the Sydney-based artist-run initiative AIRspace Projects. In 2018 she co-curated In Motion: a festival and three-week exhibition that incorporated video, kinetic sculpture, performance, and sound-based work. Her work Restful Heart was selected as the Supreme Award Winner in Changing Threads Contemporary Textile and Fibre Art Awards, 2021. Bailee works with video, electronics, textiles and light to create immersive installation and performance work. She currently lives and works in Te Whanganui-A-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand).