Checks and Balances examines systems of authority and governance through gridded formations. Artists Willabel Grindley Bennett and Hayley Zena Poynton employ the grid as both methodology and visual object as a way of fostering their neurodivergences and allowing critical contemplation of bureaucratic modes of control.

In Checks and Balances, Willabel articulates her experience as a woman with autism, revealing the importance of the grid to her process. The meticulous attention to detail, the accumulation of small, repeated marks into a larger whole is her way of moving through the world. The careful, patient act of mark-making serves simultaneously as emotional regulation, creative expression, and when called for, quiet protest. Through exploring her own vulnerabilities, and the vulnerability of our natural water sources, Willabel seeks to enact change, believing art itself is a form of resistance against big business and systems of oppression. 

Hayley uses grid systems to track each garden she mends, nurtures, observes, and inevitably must leave, as is the transience of renting. The nature of the grid provides a consistent yet flexible structure to examine living organisms. By delineating areas within her gardens as a scientist or archaeologist might, Hayley narrows in on the insects, plants and living colour palettes which form the basis of her colour-fields. The process of unplanned mark making and observed colour compositions allows Hayley’s ADHD traits of spontaneity to thrive, while the repetitive motion of weaving offers a form of regulation or informal meditation.