At PICA we recognise that we are situated within the unceded lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation. We pay our respects and offer our gratitude to Elders past and present, and to those emerging leaders in the community. We acknowledge all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the importance of their care and continued connection to culture, community and Country.

Always was, always will be.

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Joel Sherwood Spring

SETTLED

SETTLED

In his latest video, SETTLED, Wiradjuri (Central New South Wales) artist Joel Sherwood Spring critically addresses the increasingly pervasive effects of new technologies on our human experience of the world and the ongoing capitalist extraction of Aboriginal culture. 

SETTLED takes the form of an infomercial. Developed by mob.io, a pro-Indigenous grassroots software company, the video shows a young tech professional marketing a new wellness app called ‘Settled’. Her scripted spiel has the subtle, slippery fluency of ChatGPT. Racist logic and built-in biases frequently appear and intermittent digital glitches hint she may not be a real person but an AI-generated deepfake.

Designed as a multifunctional tool – from a dating app to a platform for social justice warriors and even a ‘green app’ promising data sovereignty – ‘Settled’ is positioned as a sleek technological fix for the profound legacy of settler colonialism in Australia.

About the artist

Joel Sherwood Spring is a Wiradjuri anti-disciplinary artist who works collaboratively on projects that sit outside established notions of contemporary art and architecture, attempting to transfigure spatial dynamics of power through discourse, pedagogies, art, design and architectural practice. His discursive and spatial practice examines the contested narratives of Australia’s urban cultural and Indigenous history in the face of ongoing colonisation.  

Spring was awarded the 2023 Churchie Emerging Art Prize for his work DIGGERMODE, 2022, which highlights the environmental impact of our digital world on Indigenous peoples. Recent exhibitions include Future Remains: The 2024 Macfarlane Commissions, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2024; Ten Thousand Suns: The 24th Biennale of Sydney, 2024; objects testify, UTS Gallery, Sydney, 2023; The Churchie Emerging Art Prize 2023, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2023; How I See It: Blak Art and Film, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, 2022-2023; 4th National Indigenous Art Triennial: Ceremony, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 2022; TERRA: Memory + Soil, in collaboration with Victoria Pham, West Space, Melbourne, 2022; and Eavesdropping, Ian Potter Museum, University of Melbourne, 2018.