Suspended Tensegrity form - Photo - Mad Dog Productions - RMOA - Darumbul Country - 2025
The Weight of Experience
2022-25
Suspended Collapsable Tensegrity Form, 6 Folder Stainless Steel Mirror Plates,
14 Colour Coded Poems (5 channel video 1:05:45)
Assisted by Artist Chelsea Jewell
Rockhampton Museum of Art
Durambul Country
February 22- September 28 2025
Exhibition Eassay - Michaela Bear
Close to Collapse
Suspended words from text message exchanges under our names, verbal chats (while eating curry) in italics, and a few extra ramblings by myself in the centre hang here, together,
going round in circles (at times),
somewhat structured,
teetering on the edges.
Fragmented and messy.
Maybe this is how we experience the world?
going round in circles (at times),
somewhat structured,
teetering on the edges.
Fragmented and messy.
Maybe this is how we experience the world?
Experiences may soften and fade with time, but on some level they still alchemise in the sinews of our bones.
Lincoln Austin
Experience is the structure,
the skeleton,
on which we construct our coverings/identity.
Experience is the structure,
the skeleton,
on which we construct our coverings/identity.
When we strip away the nostalgic,
the moral,
the emotional,
the pain,
the expectation,
the disappointment,
the fantasy,
the passion…
the experience remains…exciting times.
the moral,
the emotional,
the pain,
the expectation,
the disappointment,
the fantasy,
the passion…
the experience remains…exciting times.
Michaela Bear
It really comes through the physical structure – those bare bones that are revealed beneath it all, in a beautiful suspended tension that propels us onwards into the unknown.
It really comes through the physical structure – those bare bones that are revealed beneath it all, in a beautiful suspended tension that propels us onwards into the unknown.
Lincoln sent me these words the day after an extended Brisbane catch up swimming, pulling tarot on love, eating Indian food and discussing The Weight of Experience. This leisurely time spent together felt generous. Pushing up against the rapid speed of the world, we created space for softness, fragility and fertile conversations to emerge. These qualities often characterise our interactions. I love Lincoln’s raw openness in sharing their Weight of Experience. Our many lengthy text exchanges over the last several years that I have known them often offer watery depths of Piscean feeling that enrich my life.
12.03.25
Why are we so afraid of big emotions? The lust. The hate. The despair. The overwhelm. The fear. The ecstasy. The love.
The love.
The love.
The love.
The love.
Why are we so afraid of big emotions? The lust. The hate. The despair. The overwhelm. The fear. The ecstasy. The love.
The love.
The love.
The love.
The love.
We are here to feel something.
studio experiment - model #7 - Tulmur/Ipswich studio- Yuggera Country - 2024
M
It could be interesting to look back through our chats and see what weight of experience they hold.
Re-reading our messages I am nearly moved to tears by how rawly we speak
to each other. It seemed fitting to leave some of these raw traces of
conversation here.
M
Part of being a human in this world is feeling things, the good and the bad, and embracing and learning from it all. You don’t want to just watch from the sidelines…I love having such real chats with you, something that not many are brave enough to express.
Part of being a human in this world is feeling things, the good and the bad, and embracing and learning from it all. You don’t want to just watch from the sidelines…I love having such real chats with you, something that not many are brave enough to express.
L
A couple of fruit loops who think too deeply and dream too big…
my favourite people.
A couple of fruit loops who think too deeply and dream too big…
my favourite people.
Lincoln lives their life boldly, valiantly, fully, unapologetically.
L
Queer baby punk ;)
Queer baby punk ;)
L
Apparently I’m too much…I would rather be that than not enough. On the last day I’ll answer to myself and nobody else.
Apparently I’m too much…I would rather be that than not enough. On the last day I’ll answer to myself and nobody else.
There is a beauty in Lincoln’s vulnerability, reminding us of our innate humanness, as feeling, sensing bodies.
So much of my life I have received the feedback that you just have to
toughen up, you just have to have a thicker skin, you are too sensitive. So I
declared to my psychologist, no! I don’t actually. I think the appropriate
response is to open up even more, to think of myself as a net, to be
permeable, to allow stuff to move through me, rather than to deflect stuff.
Half sclale model of 'structural core' with first 'internet' experiment - Tulmur/Ipswich studio - Yuggera Country - 2024
The Net.
Reflecting back on their practice, Lincoln realised they had been playing with
mesh grids for the last 25 years.
A kind of net that shifts in and out of perception,
porous scaffolding revealing the form’s construction, while optical play
A kind of net that shifts in and out of perception,
porous scaffolding revealing the form’s construction, while optical play
confounds the eye. These grids often remain rigid.
Iwant this to be more fluid.
Like our bodies.
I journaled about our fluid bodies this morning…how they move in spirals, not
I journaled about our fluid bodies this morning…how they move in spirals, not
at sharp angles that cut and define, there is a flow.
Rockhampton Museum of Art is right next to the banks of Tunuba (Fitzroy River)
on Darumbal Country, renowned for the many barramundi that swim
within its waters.
It made sense, this net idea, that’s where I started the project. It’s who I want
to be, it’s fundamental to my practice, the grid and the net.
Tension of opposites, holding it all, but also letting it flow through you, like a
Tension of opposites, holding it all, but also letting it flow through you, like a
net…
I love that, learning from your work, that reciprocity, that dialogue, the works
talking back to you.
Chelsea Jewell and Lincoln Austin - Photo - Mad Dog Productions - RMOA - 2025
It comes from something called Experience.
The last three to four years I have been very conscious of being grateful, making sense of and coming to terms with the experiences I have had in my life, and acknowledging that those experiences don’t go away, that they remain present in my life, always.
You carry this stuff around with you.
You carry this stuff around with you.
So what do we do with all this stuff that accumulates?
Make something out of it.
Make something out of it.
Once you make it, it exists.
The main structure of The Weight of Experience features an icosidodecahedron composed of 30 struts – a 12 sided form broken down into threes, fives and sixes. Lincoln’s labour of love for the last two and half years.
It’s one of the most challenging objects I have ever made.
Tensegrity =
Close to Collapse
Close to Collapse
The structure is built using the principle of tensegrity: when structural integrity of an object is created through the suspended tension being evenly distributed between all parts. Pushing against itself.
There is no perfect tension, there is just enough, finding the zone, the potentiality of where it is going to work, you could go on forever. As you add more and more the tension builds. Until you put the entire thing together, it doesn’t take on its perfect form.
Half scale model, second assembly - The Spit, Gold Coast - Yugambeh Country - 2023
Perfection?
You can’t design this in a computer, you have to make it.
Computers aren’t perfect.
I am a maker, that is what I love to do. There is a thrill in that for me, I beat the computer.
L
No political/computational system has the capacity to override lived reality.
No political/computational system has the capacity to override lived reality.
L
For me, ultimately art has to be an expression of self, a response to an individual experience of the world, because ultimately we do experience the world alone? That aloneness results from innumerable interactions and influences, memories and bias, but ultimately is individual and unique.
L
No one can ever truly know me (or you), that is tragic, but it’s also amazing.
L
But, I have known parts of you, I carry that with me forever, it can’t be erased or undone. I can (and probably will) distort and misremember you, but you are part of me.
L
Who am I? That’s where it starts, and ends.
The secret to life is dying while laughing, this whole business is absurd. Xx
For me, ultimately art has to be an expression of self, a response to an individual experience of the world, because ultimately we do experience the world alone? That aloneness results from innumerable interactions and influences, memories and bias, but ultimately is individual and unique.
L
No one can ever truly know me (or you), that is tragic, but it’s also amazing.
L
But, I have known parts of you, I carry that with me forever, it can’t be erased or undone. I can (and probably will) distort and misremember you, but you are part of me.
L
Who am I? That’s where it starts, and ends.
The secret to life is dying while laughing, this whole business is absurd. Xx
Humans aren’t perfect.
It’s a messy, fleshy business. This means…
It’s a messy, fleshy business. This means…
I am going to make a mistake, it’s inevitable.
Stakes are high, tensegrity is the ultimate practice of perfection (which doesn’t exist). It is rarely put into practice as an architectural technique as the rigid stability of buildings means the risk is too great for something to go wrong.
As humans the first thing we spot is the imperfection. It's a curious thing, our eye scans for imperfection, not perfection.
That uniqueness…if we are all perfect that would be boring. Reminds me of the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, beauty in imperfection.
L
Today’s beautiful quote
“I wove a parachute out of everything broken.”
Willam Stafford
Today’s beautiful quote
“I wove a parachute out of everything broken.”
Willam Stafford
Tensegrity Experiment - timber and nylon cord - 2012
Let’s build the tension.
I wanted to push it as far as I could.
It has more integrity floating in space than it does on the ground, weird.
I love that reminder to be in a state of suspension, surrender, but still
moving.
Gravity pushes the work down, while a single cable holds the work up,
allowing it to gently revolve, suspended in the aliveness of being in this world.
There is this beautiful thing of being pushed and supported at the same time.
It is stable, just.
I want it to be as close to collapse as possible, while still being safe and
reliable.
The engineer that Lincoln worked with had to push his way of thinking as an
engineer. Instead of focusing on maximising strength, Lincoln wants to dance
on unstable edges.
Safe, but minimally safe.
I love the phrase you used before, ‘close to collapse’.
Well it is pretty much the story of all our lives. We imagine that we are in this
space of stability and reliability, but all of us are on the verge of collapse at
any given moment. But you can’t be aware of that all the time, you would go
insane. But it is an existential truth, that we will cease to exist at one moment,
and that moment could be any moment. But that keeps us on our toes, that
and that moment could be any moment. But that keeps us on our toes, that
keeps things vital and beautiful.
Humans are not made of solid supports like buildings. Lincoln architectures
our physical and intangible bodies of stuff, embracing their fluid failures and
fractures.
Always close to collapse.
Yet experience keeps accumulating.
In many ways these objects exist in this space,
in this time,
as a testament,
as a result of this accumulated knowledge that I have developed over these
in this time,
as a testament,
as a result of this accumulated knowledge that I have developed over these
years of making. Without these years of experience I could not have made
this object, there is no other way.
These years of experience suspend in a precise balanced tension, created
under pressure.
A sculptural thesis of where my practice/process/understanding currently sits
in time and space.
Assembling the Tensergity object - Photo - Chelsea Jewell - RMOA - 2025
It will have to be pulled apart and be remade anew again, slightly different
every time. Always shifting, but the body remembers.
Paired back to the bare bones that hold up our fleshy amorphous form.
Lincoln is interested in grappling with the experiential resonances in the body
in time and space, rather than intellectualising things too much.
There is a felt quality to our experiences.
There is a felt quality to our experiences.
The body… it’s such a part of everything, and so often forgotten, resented or
ignored.
Experiences, like our bodies, will eventually decompose.
One day.
But not today.
One day.
But not today.
Today we are alive,
full of all the flesh,
all the blood, and all the experience.
Let’s not forget.
full of all the flesh,
all the blood, and all the experience.
Let’s not forget.
Ichi-go ichi-e – one moment, once chance.
Multiple states exist at once.
Multiple states exist at once.
Weight can have connotations of heaviness and lightness.
There is a weight holding me down, or is it holding me up?
Some of the experiences I have had are a burden, some are painful. The
more I can let go of the thing I attach to those experiences, the lighter they
become. But also, many of my experiences are positive, beautiful, supportive,
uplifting.
Model #3 (Klausenhause Residency - Meganjin/Brisbane - Yuggera Country ) - 2023
Tensegrity creates a sense of density and form. Sturdy yet fragile.
Collapses down to almost nothing.
How can something so full, also feel so empty?
How can I fill this space, but not fill this space?
I can’t make a sculpture that big and be wasteful and throw it away.
Fill the space, but not the world.
The work is suspended from the cavernous 12.5 metre-high ceiling in the foyer of the Museum. Lincoln’s biggest indoor work in form and scale to date.
Experiences keep accumulating, together.
We don’t live in isolation.
There are other people and ideas mixed up in it all too.
We don’t live in isolation.
There are other people and ideas mixed up in it all too.
These are old ideas, they are stolen ideas.
Connecting with times beyond our immediate experience, that’s the beauty of
making art, writing, making music, they all connect us in time and space.
So many things exist in each moment,
artists are time travellers.
So many things exist in each moment,
artists are time travellers.
Exploring the edges of the world that create our experiences.
Then blending them into each other.
Then blending them into each other.
Second partial assembly of Tensegrity object - The Paint Factory, Yerronga - Yuggera Country - 2025
Six folded pieces of metal, one on the ground, the rest on stands, seem
dwarfed by their looming tensegrity counterpart hanging overhead. On closer
inspection, these metal pieces offer elegant distortions that make the
suspended form imperfect once again.
Cut along lines and hammered into fluid configurations. From the side they almost look like birds mid-flight, taking on a life of their own once again.
Presenting something through the day that is quite austere, reserved, still
dramatic and beautiful, and almost camouflaged – a white object in a white
space and mirrored surfaces. I love mirrored surfaces because you are never
looking at the surface, you are always looking at something reflected off the
surface. They are quite sneaky.
Much like experience,
something that is there yet we can’t quite grasp it.
Metal melts away back into the world, a conduit for reflection and new
something that is there yet we can’t quite grasp it.
Metal melts away back into the world, a conduit for reflection and new
perspectives. Things aren’t so black and white, but morphing and
changing as we move around the work and through life.
The metal sheets invite us to look closer and see the work from a different
angle, or two. In doing so, we also see ourselves, offering our own subtle
incursions. Our features warp as the work speaks back.
The beauty of art and its subjectivity is that you can tell people what it's
about, but everyone's experience of the work is going to be different.
It’s one thing to make the work and then to activate it within the space,
it then accumulates all these new experiences.
it then accumulates all these new experiences.
Photo - Mad Dog Productions - RMOA - 2025
Created together.
Lincoln is very conscious of acknowledging those that they work with. This
big project is a collective effort. Lincoln’s collaborator, artist Chelsea Jewell
brought invaluable structural architectural knowledge to the project, giving
Lincoln the confidence to explore tensegrity on a large scale.
There was also help from architect Michael Rayner, who designed the Kurilpa
There was also help from architect Michael Rayner, who designed the Kurilpa
Bridge, a tensegrity structure connecting Brisbane’s Southbank and city
across the Brisbane River.
Another net near water.
Another net near water.
Michael stepping in and throwing his weight around to get an engineer to
support the project.
Tristan. The lead engineer on Kurilpa Bridge.
… he understands this language. I couldn’t be working with a more
appropriate person.
This is not my work, I have seeded and parented it, but the village has put it
together.
Development of model #5 Tulmur/Ipswich studio 2024
Tensegrity form packaged - Tulmur/Ipswich studio 2025
Lincoln likes to bring us behind the shiny finished object.
There is nuance, there is mess, there are many experiences at play.
These are the realities of the creation process.
There is nuance, there is mess, there are many experiences at play.
These are the realities of the creation process.
It’s a conversation I have been having with myself for years now, the lack of
transparency in the arts regarding participation in the production of artworks.
Acknowledging the people who are part of that process is a way to move
away from competitive behaviour in the arts.
It brings a sense of humanity back. I like what you said before that you
like to reveal how your works are made. Sometimes there can be this
shiny facade, and the viewer doesn’t have an understanding of how the
works come into being.
I wanted to get back to that humanity, that humility of an object.
Also the messiness, the messiness of life and of that experience.
The nuts and bolts are exposed, that is where the drama is in an object
anyway. Humans are different I suppose, we have skin and we need this
stuff.
And it ages. Nature goes through these cycles.
Eventually it is worn down to the bone, that’s what is left.
We like to create these perfect polished things and perhaps when we live in
the world of these polished things we start to think the world is polished.
We forget about the messiness. Or the world could be polished, if only we
could get it right.
It is part of that striving towards something that doesn’t really exist.
Perfection is a patriarchal construct designed to immoblise people. That’s the
truth. If something is perfect, it is perfect, it can’t be improved on in any way,
so it has to be singular, it has to be fixed, what a ridiculous concept. It can
maybe exist in some alternative sphere of existence, but it is unchanging, it
can’t be here.
You have this ideal, where absolute potentially exists
but is unattainable
and then you have the messy reality that is potentially chaos
and then you find yourself
formed in the pressure of those two potentials.
but is unattainable
and then you have the messy reality that is potentially chaos
and then you find yourself
formed in the pressure of those two potentials.
That’s the stuff I like to play with.
Keeps things interesting.
L
The world will always be wild…I hope :)
The world will always be wild…I hope :)
First assembly of the 'stuctural core' - Loupe Imaging, Yerronga - Yuggera Country - Photo - Louis Lim - 2024
Let’s go deeper.
Experiences of others are drawn deeper into the exhibition through a series
of poems created by people Lincoln respects and people they don’t know.
Around eight lines. The Weight of Experience is the prompt.
Obscured into light, each letter corresponds to a different shaded hue based
on an alphabet that Lincoln developed in 2023. They become coloured
animations.
The code is so difficult to read, you just see colours.
The work is very very gentle.
The work is very very gentle.
Words have vibrancy. But meaning is just out of reach. Language fails us,
obscured. Lincoln reckons with our words.
The light poems are projected from five locations across the space, bringing
The light poems are projected from five locations across the space, bringing
the works to life as colours bounce across works and gallery walls. No longer
monochromatic forms.
It will be austere through the day and lit up like a tacky disco at night.
A desolate disco after gallery hours that one can only gaze at from afar.
Speaks to what is accessible and what isn’t. These words won’t touch us and
we can’t touch them. Sometimes that’s the way it is.
I was frightened of words. I thought words had to be perfect. They seemed to
have very specific meanings and I could never quite work out how to put
them in the right order to adequately express the thing I wanted to express
and then you realise everyone is struggling with that!
These words aren’t perfect.
Words are slippery buggers. They are beautifully slippery buggers. I’m
realising that words are as imperfect as everything else. And context, you put
those words into one context and they have a certain meaning and then you
put them into another context and they can read quite differently.
I like that you have played with that to the extreme with the light poems.
Collapsing into a close.
I said to a loved one recently that the ultimate act of love is seeing and
I said to a loved one recently that the ultimate act of love is seeing and
accepting someone fully. This requires vulnerability. Love is an act of deep
vulnerability. Lincoln isn’t afraid of going there. To show us how it is done.
Wearing their heart on their sleeve, Lincoln awakens the Weight of
Experience that is buried within us all.
L
There has been much intricacy, and frustration, and love, and exhaustion and
There has been much intricacy, and frustration, and love, and exhaustion and
guts and bold dreaming that has gone into this work. It has not been easy,
despite its magically balanced form might lead us to think.
I will now carry this object until someone takes it off my hands and I can’t
carry its weight anymore. You wait for that blessed day when someone says I
will look after it for you and you say thank you, thank you very much.
RMOA Up Late - Photo - Live To Create - 2025
The Weight of Experience Oopening Event - Rockhampton Museum of Art - Darumbul Country - 2025
RMOA Up Late - Photo - Live To Create - 2025
Half scale model developed into 'and yet, here I am, still' for the exhibition 'Arriving Slowly' at Ipswich Art Galler -Tulmur/Ipswich - Yaggera Country - 2-25
Project Contributors
....to be continued....
Chelsea Jewell and Lincoln Austin - RMOA - Photo - Mad Dog Productions - 2025
'Chelsea Jewell lives and works on the unceded land of the Yugumbeh Language Nation (Gold Coast) and is a graduate of the Byron School of Art’s three-year Contemporary Visual Art Program (2020-2022). In her emerging art practice, Chelsea leverages her background as an architect and designer, to expand on a spatial and structural literacy, exploring a rich affinity with line as object, surface, descriptor, and spectacle.
Using a pared back vocabulary of line, light and shadow, topographic surfaces and volumetric maps emerge as modular forms. Using ready-to-hand materials, the fabrication of sculptural works is expressed as a ritualised act, a repetitive meditation that exists as a feat when realised at scale.
The delicate quality of the three-dimensional drawings is often placed in tension with mass and density. Gesture is welcomed into the practice through accumulated errors that waver and shift through the work. These constructions aim to bring form to what is unseen, documenting relationships between body, time and place, relational works that have embedded narratives.
Chelsea has shown work regularly over the past three years on the Gold Coast and in Northern New South Wales. Since graduating from BSA she has been involved in numerous local arts events, performances and invitational workshops. Currently Chelsea is under the mentorship of Lincoln Austin (represented by Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane) and is collaborating with Geraldine Balcazar (performance artist & choreographer, Tweed Shire) on performative modes of practice for temporal multidisciplinary art works in the public realm.'
https://chelseajewell.com.au
Lincoln wishes to offer their deepest gratitude to Chelsea for her dedication and commitment to both this project and supporting Lincoln through the technical and emotional complexities of its development. Art bought us together, frienship, admiration and respect the result. Thank you Chelsea Jewell.
Both artist wish to acknowlegde the traditional owners of the unceded lands on which they live, work, travel through, and rest, and pay their respects to elders past, present and emerging.
Both artists also wish to acknowledge the City of Rockhampton on Durambul Country, all the generouse staff at Rockhampton Museum of Art, and that this project and associated mentoring opportunity recieved fiancial assistance from the Queensland Government though Arts Queensland.
Michaela Bear modeling 'don't get carried away with yourself, Lincoln' 2020 and ongoing
Selicks Beach, Tarntanyungga/Adelaide Kaurna Country 2025
'Michaela Bear is an emerging writer and curator currently working at RMIT University in Naarm/Melbourne. She was assistant editor for the 2017 Honolulu Biennial and has written for a range of local and international publications including ArtAsiaPacific, The Biennial Foundation website, The Australian, New Zealand Journal of Art and VAULT.'
Art Guide
Lincoln also wishes to offer Michaela their gratitude for her support, encouragement and ongoing deeply candid, love led, conversation.