Double Agency is an exhibition of the work of eleven selected professional practicing artists and teachers from around Tasmania. The exhibition constitutes an eclectic mix of practices, including sculpture, printmaking, painting and digital photography. The artists featuring in this exhibition are Wayne Brookes, Ian Bonde, Lisa Garland, Scott Cunningham, Paul Snell, Jennifer Dickens, James Walker, Jane Giblin, Ben Miller, Ed King and David Hawley.

The premise of Double Agency is built upon the notion of dual practices, and the ways in which these two practices interact. Double acknowledges how the exhibiting artists practice as teachers, and agency is understood as the combination of intention and action that ultimately results in making things happen. In considering the intertwining of their roles as artists and teachers, this exhibition exemplifies the divergent ways in which these artists conceive approaches to art making and art teaching.

The concept for Double Agency is derivative of the curator’s (Abbey MacDonald) Doctoral research undertaken at the University of Tasmania, exploring the complex inter-relationships between art making and art teaching practice. A significant outcome of the research is the inherent importance for arts teachers to engage in and with the arts as a means of enriching their pedagogy, however a range of challenges emerge as equally significant to an art teachers’ capacity to achieve this. Concepts such as duality, hybridity, synergy, pattern, and conflict emerge as critical to the unique ways artists and teachers work as dual practitioners, or double agents.

Double Agency provides an opportunity for others to explore demonstrated examples of artists’ and teachers’ success in practice. It also creates a space where teachers who do, or are interested in maintaining concurrent artist and teaching practices to make connections and share their own experiences of art making and teaching with other likeminded practitioners.