DIGITAL MEDIA EXHIBITION (16 Jan – 23 Feb 2013): Curated by William Head
236 Nicholson St, Footscray VIC 3011 (details here)
Open Wednesday-Friday 12-6PM, Saturday 12-5PM and includes:
• Skirting the Real: The Line Between Documentary Cinema & Visual Art
In this selection of short non-fiction works the idea of documentary cinema and visual art face off toe-to-toe. Where once the very idea of documentary cinema sat at the avant-garde edge of moving image art, increasingly documentary is treated by television as an arena for first-person, fish-out-of-water factutainment, the histrionics of testostereality, or downright fabrication in reality gameshow formats. In this context, higher ratings appear to be the major goal of the work. In this selection of contemporary short films, the filmmakers attempt to interrogate notions of truth, ethics, structure, style, philosophy and aesthetics in way that leaves open the question as to wether they are best received by an audience in a cinema or viewer in an art gallery. In any case we’ll be showing this program on a television but it won’t look like anything you’ll see broadcast in Australia.
Curated by William Head www.notrealfiction.com
Works include:
The Image of the City by Evan Mather (7 mins USA)www.handcraftedfilms.com
Hungerford: Symphony of a London Bridge by Alex Barret (3 mins UK)www.alexbarrett.net
Diesel in the Blood by James Arneman (5 mins Australia)
Death Choreography by Paula Jiminez (1.5 mins Spain)https://vimeo.com/
In Case I Disappear by Simon Aeppli (3 mins UK)
Fictional Recall by Urizen Fraeza (1 min Spain) www.urizen.es
Olympic and Western: A Primer on the Typographic Order and an Argument for its Proper Usage in the Built Environment by Evan Mather (7.5 mins USA) www.handcraftedfilms.com
Waterfront City by Patrick Brucker (1.3 mins Australia/Sweeden) patrickbrucker.com
He Used to Call Me Boz by Briony Dunn (13 mins Australia)www.brionydunn.com
• Prime Cuts (Anonymous)
Prime cuts is a multi-channel sound and projection installation that explores the abject implications of aspirational mundanity in suburbia.
A collaborative work by William Head and Curtis Martlew. Additional cinematography by Richard Kickbush
• Facade
An eclectic mix of single channel, soundless visual art projections. Presented on the exterior shopfront window each night from dusk to dawn Wed-Sat.
Presenting:
Once Upon A Time in the West by Kathryn Goldie
Digital Delight by Lisa Hilli
Happened by Amie Batabalisi
Because I Can’t Write Pop Songs by Amanda Kerley
Pineapples for Piscina by Claire Anna Watson
Trying to Leave the House by Kate Matthews
Galaxy of Love by Kate Matthews & Dell Stewart with ‘She Can Create’ workshop participants
On Montaigne (in Seven Essays) by Kim Munro
Big Bad Rag by Marc Eiden, Jessica Dean & Kaho Cheung
Life Botanical by William Head
Lunch Box by The Tam Projects
Drinking and Smoking by Kate Matthews
Olympic Doughnuts by Jessie Scott
•Digital Walkthrough by Curtis Martlew (We Are Human)
For a digital walkthrough of the exhibition: CLICK HERE
•Cromlech by Layla Vardo
Artist Statement:
Cromlech has been developed as part of my on-going archival video project O-bit. It is conceived as a kind of burial mound in observance of the death of analogue television. The work incorporates archival footage of television presenters who have made regular appearances on television over decades and chronicles the subject’s on-screen presence over time. The installation is a reflection upon the sense of universality of place, time and experience engendered by television, yet it is also intrinsically autobiographical both in form and content. The video subjects are presenters I have grown up watching on television and the chromlech or burial mound formation is reminiscent of one situated near my place of birth in Wales. It is my intention that mortality is present in every element of this work
Layla Vardo is a Melbourne based video artist who works with recycled imagery, found footage and archival video to create works that engage critically and poetically with the content of mainstream mass media. Layla’s installation and screen-based works appropriate and re-edit content sourced from advertising, print media, internet and television. The work reflects upon notions of time, transformation, mortality and human connection within contemporary media culture.
• Congee by Ka-Yin Kwok
Description of the work: Congee (2011) is a single channel video documenting the Sunday lunches I have with my father.
Media: Single channel video installation, HDV
Duration: 36’21″ Completion: 2011
Congee documents the lunches I have with my father on Sundays. The focus of the work is the conversation between my father and I. Over the course of our Sunday congee lunches, the Kwok family home is undergoing an extension. Meanwhile, I have moved houses with my boyfriend Ben and cat Gogo. The continuity of congee and banal conversation is slowly disrupted by the physical transformation of the room. Congee begins inside the old kitchen, moves into the storm-damaged lounge room and back into the newly built kitchen.
I chat to my father in Cantonese – a dialect that at times I struggle with. Consequently, despite an intimate setting we are at times distant. An undercurrent of unspoken emotional tension and concern for one another simmers beneath the surface and often spills over awkwardly during off-topic chatting in a way that is made clear through the filming process. The transitions between the collated footage in the final work will equally reflect the fractured communication at the kitchen table.