Embodied: Expanding the Boundaries of Contemporary Art
Image credit: Bronwyn Hack, Embodied: Limitless 2025, Installation view, Arts Projects Australia, Naarm/Melbourne, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Arts Projects Australia, Naarm/Melbourne.
Embodied marks the launch of Arts Project Australia’s Limitless commission series, a groundbreaking initiative designed to give neurodivergent artists and artists with intellectual disabilities the time, space, and resources to create ambitious, large-scale new work. Curated by Jo Salt, the exhibition presents major new commissions from Mark Smith and Bronwyn Hack, both of whom approached the body as subject and metaphor, transforming it into a site of energy, intimacy, and self-reflection.
Hack’s sprawling installation of soft breast forms, bejewelled organs, and delicate wall works explores the body’s visceral and playful dimensions, while Smith’s large-scale textile installation layers his outline with symbolic and autobiographical detail in a poetic meditation on the human condition. Their works resonate individually but also through a friendship that became a generative force in the project.
As the first in the Limitless series, Embodied signals a bold new framework for long-form commissioning. It affirms APA’s commitment to embedding its artists into national and international art discourse, not as a side conversation, but as vital contributors whose practices demand recognition, critical engagement, and institutional support.
We sat down with curator Jo Salt to unpack the curatorial vision behind Embodied – discussing the ambitions that shaped the first Limitless commission and the processes that supported Bronwyn Hack and Mark Smith in creating their most ambitious works to date.
Embodied launches the Limitless commission series. What did you prioritise curatorially to shape this as the inaugural exhibition?
For the first iteration of Limitless, it was important to set a clear tone. We wanted to provide time, space, and resources for artists to work in ways that hadn’t been possible before - not only in scale but in depth of experimentation. The focus was on fostering ambition and risk-taking, while also shifting the way neurodivergent artists and artists with intellectual disabilities are positioned in contemporary art. The series isn’t framed by tokenism; it resists the expectation that artists on the so-called margins must always answer to ideology. Instead, it foregrounds artistic rigour. In Embodied, the starting point was a single seed—the body—a key element in both Mark and Bronwyn’s practices. From there, they expanded it to explore energy, intimacy, and the elemental drive to understand the self; a process mirrored in the self-reflective qualities embedded in the work itself.
The concept of the body is central to Embodied. How did you see Bronwyn Hack and Mark Smith respond to this theme in their commissioned works?
Both artists approached the body as both literal and metaphorical, but in very different ways. Bronwyn gathered an extraordinary range of materials to create a vast installation that expands on her earlier abstracted heart forms to encompass the body in all its complexity. Her installation unfolds in three parts: enormous soft sculptures in fluffy breast forms placed on the floor, suspended bejewelled organs, and smaller, elegant wall-mounted pieces. Each work is richly textured, with hand-sewn elements that embed traces of her own image. The result is an ambitious, jewel-like body of work that is visceral, playful, and deeply personal.
Mark’s process began with instinctive conversations and a brain-dump session, where he listed all the body parts and associations that came to mind—a process that immediately carried a kind of poetic resonance. From this emerged the idea for a major key work: one that traces his own outline and layers autobiographical detail with broader symbolism. This piece became a philosophical and self-reflective meditation on the human condition, speaking both from his lived experience and from a universal perspective.
What’s remarkable is that their responses didn’t just sit side by side; a kinship developed between them. That friendship became a generative force, deepening the complexity of both installations and making the body a shared space for exploring the messiness and beauty of being alive.
Image credit: Mark Smith, Body Cognition, 2025, mixed media, 235 x 495 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Arts Projects Australia, Naarm/Melbourne.
How did you support the artists in taking creative risks during the process?
The commissions unfolded over the better part of a year, supported by mentorship, studio expertise, and production resources. Dialogue was prioritised, between the artists themselves, between the artists and the studio staff who worked alongside them, particularly Peter Douglas and Jodie Kipps, and through ongoing conversations with me and the wider team at Arts Project Australia (APA). For Bronwyn, this meant access to new materials and peer support that created opportunities to test ambitious sculptural forms. For Mark, it meant having the space to develop a major concept and translate it into a textile, with knowledgeable colleagues and peers to exchange ideas and offer advice on process and presentation. This collective scaffolding - always artist-led, always centred on the artists’ vision - gave them the freedom to take risks without being constrained by logistics, opening space for their practices to move into new territory.
What kind of mentorship or structural support was provided to help them work at this new scale?
Staff artists Jodie Kipps and Peter Douglas worked closely with the artists throughout, often acting as sounding boards and offering technical, material and conceptual support if needed. The gallery and production teams ensured the works could be realised to their full scale and ambition within the space. The process was never top-down but collaborative, with the artists always leading, supported by an infrastructure designed to hold their ambition.
How does Embodied build upon or depart from past exhibitions at Arts Project Australia?
APA has always championed artistic excellence, foregrounded the creative process and positioning our artists within contemporary art discourse. From the beginning, it has created the space and opportunity for artists to develop their practices in ways that might not otherwise be possible within a sector where boundaries are often tightly drawn, opening pathways into major cultural institutions, collections, and international exhibitions.
Embodied, the first exhibition in the Limitless series, introduces a new framework: long-form commissioning that demands time, resources, and sustained structural investment. For the first time, APA artists have undertaken large-scale commissions over an extended period. That distinction matters - shifting the focus from celebrating works that already exist to actively supporting ambitious new site-responsive installations that can sit confidently in dialogue with national and international contemporary art, building on the broader trajectory of APA artists whose practices are increasingly recognised worldwide.
Image credit: Bronwyn Hack, Embodied: Limitless 2025, Installation view, Arts Projects Australia, Naarm/Melbourne, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Arts Projects Australia, Naarm/Melbourne.
The Limitless commissions aim to create pathways for neurodivergent artists and artists with intellectual disability in the broader arts sector. How do you hope this series will shift perceptions within the wider art world?
Too often, neurodivergent artists are celebrated for the sake of inclusion rather than being taken seriously for their artistic contributions. When that happens, it diminishes the integrity of their practice and obscures the value of their work. Limitless insists on a different approach—one that positions these artists not in a side conversation, but at the centre of contemporary art history.
My hope is that Embodied contributes to a shift in how cultural institutions and the broader sector engage, including the ways we write and speak about these practices. That means moving away from biography or sentimentality, and instead recognising the integrity, ambition, and complexity of the work itself. If museums, curators, and collectors respond to these commissions on their own artistic terms—through acquisitions, programming, and more thoughtful writing and interpretation—then perceptions can begin to shift in a meaningful and enduring way.
Collaboration is highlighted as a core principle of Limitless. In curating Embodied, what forms of collaboration were most critical?
Collaboration took three key forms: between Bronwyn and Mark as peers and friends; between the artists and staff artists who support and mentor; and between the artists and me. But it was Mark and Bronwyn who drove the projects with remarkable passion and commitment, working with intensity over many months, supported by a dedicated team across the organisation. At every stage, the artists’ visions were held at the centre, ensuring the process remained generative and expansive, and creating the conditions for risk and experimentation to flourish.
Could you share insights into the working process of Hack and Smith?
Bronwyn’s process was tactile and material, experimenting with textiles and surfaces by adding beading, wood, fringing, and a wide array of materials. She often incorporated printed fragments of her own body and kept an extraordinary visual diary filled with reference images that inspired and shaped her pieces.
Mark’s approach was more reflective and diagrammatic. The outline of his body was traced and rendered in faux leather, surrounded by clusters of words. The sheer scale of his work presented challenges in the shared studio; it was too large to fully lay out during regular hours. There were a few workarounds: when the piece could be brought out, he climbed a ladder to view it from above, gaining a bird’s-eye perspective, and later refined the final details once the work was hung in the gallery space.
Both artists advanced their practices by working at a new scale, from five-metre forms to large floor pieces, and by allowing abstraction and personal symbolism to co-exist in ways that pushed their work into new territory.
Image credit: Bronwyn Hack, Brain (detail), 2025, mixed media, 31 x 54 x 39 cm. Bronwyn Hack, Lungs (detail), 2025, mixed media. Courtesy of the artist and Arts Projects Australia, Naarm/Melbourne
In presenting Embodied at APA, how did the physical exhibition design contribute to amplifying the power of these new commissions?
The exhibition design emphasised both scale and presence. Works are installed to command the room, encouraging viewers to slow down, notice the details, and engage with the pieces physically. Bronwyn’s suspended soft sculptures are mirrored in reflective panels, while a sculptural brain rests on a circular mirror on the floor—a focal point that pulls the gaze downward and invites reflection on interiority and thought. Opulent, fleshy tones across the walls reinforce the bodily themes running through the exhibition, while additional lighting heightens intimacy and draws out the surfaces of the work.
The long wall is dedicated to Mark’s installation, the works stretching across the surface, while Bronwyn’s work extends into the space, encouraging audiences to move around and between the forms. Together, these choices amplified the intimacy of the commissions - abstraction at scale yet anchored in deeply personal forms that draw the audience closer. The scale pulls the viewer out, and the detail within the textiles pulls the viewer in.
Looking ahead, what do you hope Embodied achieves for both the participating artists and the Limitless series as a whole?
For Mark and Bronwyn, Embodied has inspired new ways of working and elevated their practices to the next level. The commissions created an opportunity to move beyond boundaries - whether artistic, imagined, or socially imposed. It has been about expanding what they believed possible and, in doing so, allowing others to fully recognise the depth and ambition of their practices.
For the Limitless series more broadly, the aim is to create an enduring platform that supports APA artists in taking risks, pursuing long-form projects, and having their work recognised within the highest levels of contemporary art.
My hope is that Limitless contributes to a lasting shift - not just increasing visibility but embedding neurodivergent artists and artists with intellectual disability into the fabric of the art world: from acquisitions and collections to the ways artists are written about, researched, and included in curatorial projects and contexts. If the series helps move us closer to that future, then it will be shaping the future we want to see.
Embodied: Limitless 2025 Commission Series is running from August 23 to October 4, 2025 at Arts Project Australia gallery, 35 Johnston Street, Collingwood, VIC, 3066, Australia
