Linda Dement

Education

She graduated with a Bachelor Of Arts (Fine Arts) from City Art Institute, Sydney in 1988.

Career

She began exhibiting in 1984. Dement is largely known for her exploration of the creative possibilities of emergent technologies such as the Civil Defense-ROM, 3-Doctorate modelling, interactive software and early computing. Dement"s work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally in galleries and festivals, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Ars Electronica in Austria, the International Symposia of Electronic Art in Sydney and Montreal and the Impakt Media Arts Festival in Europe.

Along with Australian artist collective VNS Matrix, Dement"s work pioneered Australian cyberfeminism in art

Cyberfeminist politics and poetics used technology to deconstruct gender stereotypes in mainstream culture, and proactively situated women in relation to the rise of electronic culture in the early 1990s. Through her work, Dement aims to "give form to the unbearable." Dement"s work has been described as depersonalised autobiography, that is an appropriation of the digital as a space of expression, or a "rupture" in the info-tech dominated sphere of computer culture.

Her work explores the relationship between the physical body and the body politic, exaggerating female "other-ness" or the "monstrous-feminine." Some of Dements early works have come under censorship by the Australian Government. Typhoid Mary was taken to the NSW Parliament as being "obscene" and subsequently came under the classification of the Australian Government" General’ s Office of Film and Literature as "not suitable for those under the age of 18".

In My Gash also received a formal "Restricted" classification.

Achievements

• Dement was twice awarded the Harries Australian National Digital Art Award in 2005 and 2006, was awarded a New Media Arts Fellowship in 1996 and the Digital Futures Fund in 2010 by the Australia Council for the Arts, Best Civil Defense-ROM at the 9th Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival in Germany and Honorable Mentions by New Voices/New Visions, Palo Alto, California and Ars Electronica, Austria.