Laying Down and Looking Up is an open studio presentation developed through a six-week artist residency in Perth, Western Australia. Through this residency, 15 new works were created through experimentation, testing new materials and ideas. While remaining faithful to Tim’s long-standing interests in mythical creatures, fantasy narratives, and human–animal connection—along with his trademark use of digital rendering, VR drawing, and complex fabrication processes—Open Studio makes a critical pivot away from the typical mode of exhibitionary display. Tim’s gambit is that this ad hoc display of works in progress, open to the public for only two hours, retains the merits of public presentation while jettisoning expectations of resolved outcomes (for both artist and audience). This is unapologetically Tim. For him, resolution is always a tricky compromise, as it invariably straightjackets the animacy of his constructed worlds, fixing objects in place and requiring him to walk away from the process of making. The thing you have to understand about Tim is that he is always making and he hates not making.

We had a lengthy discussion in the final days of his residency about the potentially confusing format of this presentation: “Is this just a solo exhibition, or one big studio visit in a gallery?” “How does one make it look good without making it look finished?” etc. Eventually, we came to the conclusion that these potential problems were constructions that may even function productively as solutions for thinking about Tim’s work. The open studio format operates as an earnest reflection of his practice—how he thinks, makes, experiments, goes back and forth, and solves problems.

— Samuel Beilby