Trent Crawford and Matthew Ware

​Trent Crawford (b.1995) is a Melbourne based artist working with photography, video, and installation. His work considers the effects images and image-based technology have on human perception and agency. In 2019 Trent exhibited artworks at Hobiennale (Hobart), Myojuji Sarue (Tokyo), Kuiper Projects (Brisbane) and held a solo exhibition at c3 (Melbourne). He completed a BFA (Honours) at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2017, where he currently teaches the course Contemporary Art and Biomedicine. 

A long term artistic and curatorial project of Matthew Ware (b. 1992, Melbourne), Musée du Strip is a platform for presenting art, often in non-traditional spaces, with an emphasis on community and public interaction. Musée du Strip was awarded the Emerging Curators Prize from La Trobe Art Institute. 

Divine Intervention

Divine Intervention is a multifaceted temporary public art project in which an inflatable greenhouse filled with smiley face helium balloons will be resurrected as a powerful beacon of hope. Exploring the intersection between spirituality and technology, this artwork will be accompanied by live telepathic UFO summonings to reach the entities above in order to heed our calls for a better world. 

Project Breakdown:

1. A full-sized, transparent inflatable greenhouse structure resembling the shape of the Musée du Strip will float in the air, filled with dozens of smiley face balloons. Smiley face balloons are a symbolic tool historically used by summoners to make contact with the entities above. Light from below, the safety ropes tethering the museum to the ground will appear almost invisible, creating a real illusion of floatation – as the Musée itself becomes visually and physically transformed into an unidentified flying object, beckoning to those above. 
2. Utilizing the floating structure as a tool to attract entities, facilitators on the ground will host impromptu orb manifestation sessions with members of the public, in which digital cameras (or phones) will be used to capture any sightings that occur. 
3. Participants will be encouraged to upload photographs, along with one wish, to a custom-built website. The uploaded content, along with other documentation of the event, will be then turned into a digital and physical publication.