Malware Detected
Michelle Le Plastrier
Malware Detected (detail) 2024
Midfire clay
Underglaze, glaze
27 x 20 x 26 cm
About the Artwork
Malware Detected imagines a digital threat made tangible, escaping the confines of the screen. A tentacled creature emerges from a retro ceramic monitor, embodying the invisible dangers that lurk within our increasingly technology-dependent lives. The work comments on the rapidly evolving landscape of scams, data leaks, AI impersonation, and malware, making it increasingly difficult to keep up and stay safe in the digital realm.
Using retro-futurism to examine the way we simultaneously progress forwards and regress backwards, it highlights how technological progress is often accompanied by new vulnerabilities. By giving these intangible risks physical form, the work explores the collapsing boundary between virtual and lived experience.
About the Artist
Michelle Le Plastrier is a Gold Coast–based multidisciplinary artist with a focus on hand-built ceramics, who explores identity, socio-political, and environmental issues all in her signature candy-coloured style. Michelle teaches introductory ceramics across South-East Queensland and has exhibited and produced workshops for galleries, councils, and businesses across Australia.
Michelle was artist-in-residence through HOTA’s inaugural ArtKeeper program in 2021–22, and exhibited her body of work Dopamine Days at HOTA in 2023–24. In 2023, she won the Environmental Art Award at the Queensland Regional Art Awards and was a finalist in the previous two iterations of the North Queensland Ceramic Awards at Perc Tucker Regional Gallery (2022, 2024).