OPENING NIGHT I SATURDAY 29th OF AUGUST 6pm till 8pm
ADDITIONAL SOUND PERFORMANCE BY MZW - 8pm till 10pm
BIO- HOLLY WILSON
Holly Wilson is an Australian multidisciplinary artist, musician, writer, curator and director of LEDA Gallery, which she founded in 2021. Originally from Melbourne, she later relocated to the Hunter region before studying Fine Art, Creative Writing and Philosophy.
Alongside her visual arts practice, she has worked professionally as a musician for nearly two decades. Music continues to inform the atmospheric, rhythmic and sensory qualities of her work.
Beginning with a background in traditional painting practices. Over time Holly Wilson developed in philosophy, contemporary culture and lived experience, her practice examines intimacy, identity, femininity, desire, visibility and psychological structures. Her work is informed by artists and thinkers such Tracey Emin, Sophie Calle, John Berger and Roland Barthes.
Musically, Holly Wilson draws influence from the immersive sound worlds of Massive Attack, Portishead, Beach House, Hundred Waters, FKA twigs, The Prodigy and Björk.
DO YOU LIKE ME - ARTIST STATEMENT
Do You Like Me is not a rejection of social media, but an examination of how digital technologies have transformed one of humanity’s oldest impulses: the desire to be seen, valued and accepted.
Comparison has always existed. What has changed is not our inclination to compare ourselves with others, but the scale, immediacy and persistence with which comparison now operates.
Social media has collapsed the distance between aspiration and everyday life. The people we compare ourselves to no longer exist solely within the fashion world, celebrity culture or cinema. They appear to be our peers, existing within an endless stream of curated, filtered, edited and increasingly AI-mediated representations. Comparison no longer waits for us in designated spaces; it follows us into our homes, our workplaces, our relationships and our most private moments. It is immediate, continuous and difficult to step outside of.
Beauty has become participatory and perpetually performed.
We learned to document ourselves while still becoming ourselves. We are simultaneously the audience, the performer and the critic.
Within this environment, the algorithm does more than determine what we see. It begins to shape what is rewarded, repeated and eventually understood as desirable.
Across photography, sound, video installation and live performance, DO YOU LIKE ME explores the relationship between visibility, identity and self-presentation. The photographic figures appear nude and poised in high heels, captured in gestures that mirror the casual performance of the online self. Their bodies remain exposed while their faces are concealed by hessian bags, disrupting the traditional site of identity and shifting attention towards the body as image rather than the individual as subject.
The obscured face transforms each figure into an anonymous body, reflecting a culture in which identity becomes increasingly secondary to image and individuality risks being compressed into a repeatable aesthetic. The hessian suggests an erasure produced not through invisibility, but through overexposure.
Chains appear throughout the exhibition as symbols of attachment and constraint. They represent the invisible ties that bind identity and self-worth to external validation, and the difficulty of separating who we are from how we are seen, desired and received by others.
An original sound work expands these ideas beyond the photographic image. Built from layered electronic textures, fragmented voices, repetition and sonic distortion, the composition reflects the psychological rhythms of digital culture: cycles of comparison, affirmation, self-surveillance and doubt. Rather than functioning as accompaniment, the sound immerses the viewer within the emotional atmosphere of the installation, extending the work beyond what can be seen into what can be felt.
Rather than positioning technology as either liberating or harmful, HOLLY WILSON considers the emotional cost of living under continuous observation. Social media can offer connection, creative freedom, community and the power to author our own image. But what happens psychologically when that image must be continually maintained, evaluated and compared?
What do we gain from being seen, and what do we give up? What is lost when self-expression becomes self-surveillance, visibility becomes labour, and our sense of worth becomes inseparable from how we are received by others?
These questions are not an argument for abandoning social media. It is an extraordinary tool for connection, expression and access. Instead, the exhibition asks us to reconsider the relationship we have formed with it: to recognise what we are seeking from our visibility, what we allow it to determine, and whether it remains a tool we use? Or has it become a measure through which we understand our value?
Beneath the performance, the comparison and the endless need for affirmation, are we all simply asking the same question:
Do you like me?