Exhibition Dates: 1st-4th Oct 2026

Following an open call in the summer, the LASTA Youth Arts Festival included Backspace, an exhibition of artworks that celebrated a return to slowness in an age of instant images, prepackaged experience, and mindless consumption.

Through these analogue works, observation becomes radical and seemingly outdated media become a vehicle for scrutiny and resistance.

At the advent of the internet, Craig McDaniel and Jean Robertson understood that ‘through painting, one is subscribing to a world that is less frenetic in the glut of information being consumed...a world where the construction of meaning is more deliberate.’

The rat race has become a sprint. In an age where we feel like we are constantly playing catch-up, slow art processes are speed bumps that force us to pause and consider elements of humanity which we have learned to overlook.

A backspace is not an erasure or an admission of error. When we backspace – digitally erase – we reflect, retrace, rethink and refine our steps forward.