ATOMICX is a multi-disciplinary artist, curator and Creative Director, best known for their immersive events and distinct, colourful painting style. Their practice responds to identity through a figurative and experimental approach, while exploring a vibrant pallet of colour.
ATOMICX has established themself as a 'creative powerhouse', founding and directing two key creative initiatives, No Order Magazine and Riot Collective, in Brisbane's ever-expanding art scene. Each initiative focuses on providing a platform for a combination of established and emerging artists, along with highlighting femme, non-binary and genderqueer creatives in a scene dominated by men.
They have worked alongside galleries such as Mayne Line Gallery, Cordelia Street Gallery, Woollonggabba Art Gallery, Bib 'n' Brace, Backdock Arts, The Station, VentSpace, Ipswich Gallery and Toowoomba Regional Gallery.
ATOMICX lives and works in Brisbane/Meanjin, Australia.
Q: How would you describe yourself as an artist and why do you do what you do? You have opened so many different pathways for yourself, where is that drive and passion from?
I have always been creative which I guess is pretty cliché. I started doing these illustrations in my final year of high school which I then put on my Instagram page and I got positive reception [so] then I just kept doing art and stuff like that. I landed my first exhibition opportunity which was back in early February 2021, where I did a body of work experimenting with aerosols. I look back on it and I’m like damn that’s pretty shit [laughs] but you’ve got to start somewhere. I exhibited at Bad Olive, which is run by powerhouse Abby Olive and it's this huge immersive event with lots of different components. I was also part of the ‘Bad Olive Beginnings Festival’ which was thrown at Backdock Arts in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane and I made a really specific effort to meet everybody at the exhibition and introduce myself to the other artists and network. From then on things started to really pick up for me, I exhibited 10 or 11 times last year in various different exhibitions which was good but I was craving something a little bit more because I am very business oriented. I really enjoy painting but I also enjoy organising and managing things. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in the arts community and fill a gap because Brisbane is quite small in comparison to Melbourne and Sydney. I thought now is a really great time to develop my own identity in the scene and start building a really strong foundation which I can expand on for the next decade. I was trying to brainstorm what I was going to do and I was like oh I really enjoy graphic design and illustration maybe I could do a magazine, so that’s how No Order started. I don’t particularly like the censorship and restrictions which exist in art galleries, so the magazine is more of a space for those thought provoking and provocative pieces of work to be shown. I extended that to create a space for artists who don’t know where to start, for emerging artists to mix with established artists, so there are networking opportunities between the different circles as it really benefited my career in its early stages. A lot of people expected it to be a little zine that I printed out at officeworks and stapled together myself but it was a 80-something page art book. Mid October I launched that and it was a huge success. We sold out the venue and magazine which was amazing. This gave me some confidence to push myself further.
Then comes my next project, Riot Collective. I randomly get a phone call from the people that had organised Anywhere Festival, as I had exhibited at their ‘Woman in the Wallpaper’ exhibition earlier that year - “Hey Liv, we saw what you did for the mag, we thought the show was really successful, I know this is short notice but I wanted to see if you’d like to throw an exhibition in the next two weeks”. I was like try me, I’m up for the challenge. I sort of found myself craving throwing another show. Using the contacts I had, I reached out to a bunch of artists but it got me thinking I can't throw this under No Order, it’s on a very specific track and under a very specific brand identity. I thought about the other gap in the market; there is a lack of representation for gender queer people and femme identifying people, something that I have noticed being gender queer myself. That is how Riot Collective was born with the pressure of doing an exhibition in 2-3 weeks.
Moving into 2022, my work has expanded because I am very driven. In February I threw Fluidity, an exhibition solely exhibiting non binary artists, with another artist friend of mine and got positive reviews which pushed me to focus more on Riot in the interim. I had always loved the energy at music and art festivals, as well as raves - there was something quite mesmerising about all of the lasers and strobes that stuck with me. This gave me the idea to throw a rave, or rather, ‘queer dance party’. There weren’t many spaces in that scene where I felt safe or was inclusive of queer people which really reinforced my desire to produce an event like that. Right off the back of Fluidity I curated a lineup of femme, non-binary and gender queer DJs, got the venue, designed the lighting installation and setup which was hectic. I also had a phenomenal artist friend of mine, Germ, project hand-drawn animations behind the DJs, which fused art and sound together really well.
Networking gets me all of these really random opportunities which is why I am so big on it. Following on from Warped, I got a call from a friend to do some life drawing filming on a film set because the painter had pulled out. I went and did that and met the CH-Void people and pitched the next RIOT show idea I had to them. The exhibition explored themes of body autonomy. It was my most successful curation to date. My curatorial eye is something that will become more refined with time. The next project is the Issue 02 of the magazine in November.
I am primarily a curator but I would call myself an artist because I have my own practice, a creative director because I run creative projects like the magazine and I do all of the graphic design work and all of it is done by me.
303:01 & 303:02, 2022
ATOMICX
Oils on canvas, 24 x 30 inches
Riot Dismal Reflections Installation - Minori Ueda for Channel Void
No Order Magazine Issue 01 Launch - Kyel Golly
Q: Riot Collective creates a space and a voice for underrepresented groups. Why did you choose to cultivate each event as collective groups of people?
With Riot Collective I get an idea and want to bring it to life. With the Fluidity event, it was just non-binary artists and I had never been, never seen, never heard of an exhibition with just non-binary artists in Brisbane before so I curated that with another non-binart artist. Fluidity was playing on the word fluidity and the gender spectrum. Warped was, well I guess there is context to everything, but I was in a really strange place during the time i was planning that event. I wanted to focus on bringing art into that space and creating a space that takes your brain away for the night, it warps your perception of time and you are just in the moment. As a Creative Director, I don’t like just putting art on walls, there needs to be some immersive element, for example with Fluidity we had the exhibition, the djs, a photography installation in an old taxi spray bay, poetry readings and a friend of mine, Micah Rustichelli, do live performance art throughout the evening. They had these two mannequins attached to nipple clamps and they would paint their body and then each time they’d move it would pull up a feminine or masculine mannequin and then you could write notes to the artist. It's all about providing a multi-tiered experience of interaction rather than just art on a wall. It's considering the viewers' experience as well, it's like why am I paying to come to this exhibition, what part is benefiting me - aside from the fact of supporting the creative community - like what is this actually for.
Q: How would you describe the creative scene in Brisbane? Were you inspired by what was already there or did you feel the need to create a space of your own?
In terms of the Brisbane Art scene, the only major thing that happens every year is the Brisbane festival which is not exclusively art, it's for those people who want a 50K or 20K grant to do a huge installation piece in a public space which is great but not for everybody. There is also Brisbane Art Design Festival but I haven’t seen that around for a little while and Brisbane Street Art Festival, which are the main commercial level ones that the council sponsors. A step down would be emerging art prizes, but those are academically critiqued and that's a prize, so if you’re a finalist then you exhibit. Then there are some underground projects, so what I do for No Order Magazine and Riot Collective, as well as A to Z, run by Alex and Zaide, who started off with these insane house parties that were exhibitions with djs, a rave in their basement and they even had a booze sponsor. All of these projects start from really cool backstories and they all serve a purpose. I want my events to be an experience.
Riot Warped - AL Photography
Micah Rustichelli at Riot Fluidity- Laylarh