Keeping Busy examines the aesthetics of leisure, unproductivity and the act of inhabiting digital space as a neoliberal subject. The exhibition includes video, installation, and performative elements, and utilises screen-capturing in line with Sutherland’s ongoing exploration of the relationship between performativity and documentation. Within the exhibition Sutherland explores peer-to-peer file sharing, procrastination, phone game advertisements and the deletion of the artist’s own Facebook friends. These acts delve into notions of isolation, perceived connectivity and alternative modes of textual and emotional exchange.

Paul Sutherland is an emerging visual artist working mainly with photography in the expanded field, video and affective installation. Sutherland’s practice is currently concerned with the relationship between performance and documentation, but in all of his work, a general interest in post-photographic processes can be seen. Sutherland has previously exhibited at Sawtooth ARI (TAS), Smart Casual (WA), Perth Centre for Photography (WA) and will have work in the upcoming Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award. Work from his series, “Interrupted Recollection”, has won two awards at the Perth Centre for Photography and is held in multiple private collections. In 2016, he graduated from Curtin University with a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours.