Striking Contrasts Educational Resource

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STRIKINGCONTRASTS

EDUCATION RESOURCE

www.netsaustralia.org.au/whats-on/striking-contrasts

Curated by dLux MediaArts in association with Geoffrey Weary, Sydney College of the Arts,University of Sydney and toured by Museums & Galleries of NSW


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About this resource

This resource has been produced by dLux

MediaArts and Museums & Galleries of NSWas an educational guide to accompany theStriking Contrastsexhibition. It is intended toassist school students and teachers in theunderstanding and enjoyment of contemporaryvideo art.

The Striking ContrastsEducation Resourceprovides an opportunity for teachers tobring together the Creative Arts, Technology,English, Society and Environment with an

emphasis on critical thinking and popularculture, perception, comparative disciplinesand professional practice.

This resource can be used for backgroundinformation prior to an exhibition visitor serve as a guide for discussion whileexperiencing the work directly. It also includesfocus questions designed to be completedduring or following a visit to the exhibition.These activities are separated into an

intermediate and advanced level suitable forupper secondary students.

Teachers and educators are invited to adaptthe information and activities included tomeet the needs of their particular studentgroup.

Image: Angelica Mesiti, Rapture (silent anthem), 2009,single-channel High Definition video, colour, silent, 10:10min. Image courtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery.Cover Image: Jess MacNeil,The Wall, 2009, HighDefinition digital video, stereo sound, 7:00 min. Imagecourtesy the artist.

About dLux MediaArts

dLux MediaArtsis one of Australias key screen and

media arts organisations, committed to supportingthe development, engagement and experience ofcontemporary screen and digital media culture.Stemming from this objective, dLux MediaArtsprograms and activities include research into emergingtechnologies and media arts practices, supportingAustralian new media artists in the development of theirwork, fostering partnerships between the public andprivate sector, curation and touring of digital media artsexhibitions.

dLux MediaArts is assisted by the NSWGovernment through Arts NSW

About Museums & Galleriesof NSW

Museums & Galleries of NSW(M&G NSW) is the peakbody supporting a dynamic mix of museums, galleriesand Aboriginal cultural centres in both metropolitan andregional areas throughout the state.

As part of the National Exhibitions Touring SupportAustralia network, M&G NSW is committed to thedelivery of best practice touring exhibitions ofcontemporary visual culture to remote and metropolitancommunities throughout NSW and Australia.

Museums & Galleries of NSW is assistedby the NSW Government through ArtsNSW and by the Australian Governmentthrough the Australia Council, its arts

funding and advisory body.

Striking Contrasts is curated by dLux MediaArts inassociation with Geoffrey Weary, Sydney College of theArts, University of Sydney and toured by Museums &

Galleries of NSW


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A Brief History of Video Art

Video has become the default medium of the21st century. 1Over the last ten years, videoart has found a new popularity and validityin the context of international biennales,private collections, private galleries and publicmuseums.

The production and exhibition of video artworks is more widespread and legitimisedin the contemporary art world than everbefore. In galleries and museums around theworld, projection spaces, plasma screens, andsculptural video installations are now common.According to Australian artist and critic, JohnConomos,

video art has shifted, overthe last three decades, frombeing an avant-garde mediumof representation located in themargins of our art world to nowbeing at its centre. 2

The widespread presence of video can beattributed to a number of aesthetic, cultural,historical and technological factors. Accordingto Australian curator and writer Russell Storerthese include

the growing sophistication andeconomic accessibility of videorecording, editing and projectiontechnology; the dominance of themoving image in everyday lifeand culture; and the art worldsconstant desire for the new. 3

Yet the medium of video is hardly new; ithas a history dating back some 40 years.The emergence of video art in the 1960s,while sparked by the availability of newtechnologies, was also informed by particularsocial conditions. The launch of televisionin the 1950s thrust the mass media intomost peoples living rooms, providingan unprecedented way for political andcommercial messages to be promoted via

advertising, news and entertainment. And so,early video art was often a response to thisrapid expansion of corporate culture intoprivate space.

The introduction of portable video equipmentinto the domestic market in 1965, mostnotably the Sony Corporations Portapak,made it possible for individuals to producetheir own videos in contrast to the controlledand centralised information of broadcasttelevision.

According to video historian Michael Rush,this meant that people were no longerbound by the constrictions of Hollywoodpower brokers and mainstream televisionproducers, [and] those with a vision were ableto participate in the visual communicationrevolution that was rapidly changing socialand cultural life throughout the world. 4

Video brought ease, mobility and affordabilityto the art of the moving image and presentedan alternative to traditional studio disciplines.Artists could leave the studio behind and usethe camera to instantly record, comment andreflect on events of the time. Or they couldsimply turn the camera on themselves andexplore the artistic process. Artists were ableto make use of the spontaneity that videoprovided to directly critique the processes,content and effects of television. Korean-born

Fluxus artist and musician Nam June Paikis regarded as the pioneer of the video artgenre. The birth of video art is often citedas the day in 1965 when Paik took his newlypurchased Sony Portapak out onto the streetsand captured footage of local activity.

Australian Video Art

Unlike international video art, Australian video

art does not have a beginning that can betraced to one person. Rather, a variety ofcreative people from the areas of sculpture,performance, filmmaking and documentarybegan to produce the first video experimentsin the early 1970s. Conomos suggests that

the early developments ofAustralian video art were centredaround a complex cluster of

different artistic personalities, artforms, energies and discourses. 5


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As with American and European histories,early video art in Australia developedalongside other forms of conceptual practicethat were engaged in critiques of modernistart and ideas, such as performance andexperimental film.

Australian art historian Jacqueline Millnernotes that

in the early 1970s there weretwo broad approaches to videomaking in Australia, namelysociopolitical commentary andpersonal experimentation. 6

The first stream consisted of video artists whowere interested in documenting communitiesand social issues. These artists were oftenconnected to grassroots organisations andthe free video access centres establishedunder the Whitlam Government in 1974.

The video access centres provided videofacilities and encouraged individualsand communities to turn the camera onthemselves and tell their stories. The

centres became associated with activism,as communities that had been unable toaccess art or film funding used video tospeak out about issues that concerned them.Video artist Peter Callas recalls that videobecame part of a brief period of socialexperimentation in the mid 1970s and thetapes which originated in Australia at thattime from a series of government-sponsoredcommunity video access centres were mostlydocuments of, or confrontations with, social

problems.7

Other video artists - influencedby American artists such asVito Acconci and Chris Burden -followed more personal, formalapproaches and were oftenengaged in performance andconceptual art. For many of

these artists, video was used asan extension of performance.

This practice was largely based around twoSydney artist-run spaces, Inhibodress Galleryand later at Central Street Gallery. MikeParr and Peter Kennedy, who establishedInhibodress in 1970, were drawn to thereal time immediacy of video and used

the camera to document their performativeexperiments, both in the gallery and outsidein the landscape. As Australian artist andvideo historian Stephen Jones observes, thesetapes were the first in the country to use aconceptual art framework. 8

Video art in Australia continued to gainmomentum, helped along by a number ofexhibitions of video art, the development ofthe International Video Art Festival (1986-

92) in Sydney, and growing institutional andcommercial interest. From the late 1970s,video artists such as Nam June Paik, BillViola and Les Levine visited Australia andintroduced local artists and audiences to newforms of video practice.

The Biennale of Sydney has included videoart since the second Biennale in 1976 andvideo has continued to be a presence in thesubsequent Biennales in varying degrees ever

since. In 1979, Stephen Jones and BerniceMurphy curated Videotapes in Australia, adiverse selection of Australian video works,which travelled to America and Canada beforebeing presented at the Art Gallery of NewSouth Wales in 1980.

By the 1980s, Australian videoart had become an art formrich in diversity and elaboratetechnological experimentation.Artists became increasinglyinfluenced by the aesthetics ofmusic video clips and samplingthe practice of taking culturalartefacts such as music or filmand combining them into a newcreative form. 9

Video technologies were changing at an ever-

expanding rate. Artists were able to use newediting and effects technology to manipulatethe image as never before. Australian arthistorian Daniel Palmer notes that the 1980s


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saw an almost obsessive emphasis onthe playful refiguring of preexisting mediaimagery. 10Video artists such as Peter Callas,Ian Haig and Ross Harley were among many

that embodied this trend.

The development of new media arts in the1990s meant that video art became quitea different hybrid medium. New media artsencompassed artworks created with otherrecent technologies, including: film, video,digital art, computer games, animation andinternet art. According to Palmer, manyerstwhile video artists had now become videoand computer artists, or more broadly media

artists. 11

Video Art Today

In the last decade, the content of the workhas become central to video art in Australiaand elsewhere, largely due to the prevalenceof video in contemporary culture and theneed to engage our attention. 12

This is in marked contrast to the 1970s and1980s where the technical production wasthe main focus for artists. This has meantthat contemporary video art is marked bydiversityin both the production and displayof work. Video has become just one ofthe many available options for the youngergeneration of artists in Australia and overseas.Palmer observes,

video is now a part of the

practice of many, if not most,of Australias best knowncontemporary artists. 13

Today, Australian artists use video for adiverse range of aesthetic, cultural andconceptual reasons. Some do so to explorethe space of the interactive image, others do

so to work with popular music forms, andstill others do so to work within the broadercinematic, conceptual and performancetraditions of visual arts. Artists as diverse asTracey Moffatt, Destiny Deacon, The Kingpins,John Gillies, Kate Murphy and ShaunGladwell are now choosing to work withvideo because of its immediacy, its everydayfamiliarity, and the increased availability ofquality digital video and computer basedediting software.

The recent explosion of online videoplatforms, such as YouTube and Vimeohas meant that artists (and non-artists) arenow easily able to upload their videos anddisseminate their works to a wide audiencewith the click of a button.

Video art is no longer thecountercultural medium that itonce was, critiquing fine artsand television; it has movedfrom the marginal to themainstream and to a positionwhere it is an integral part ofartists spaces, galleries andmuseums.

Diana Smith, 2009

Image: Nicola Walkerden,CINAMNESIA,2012, 16mmfilm/digital video, stereo sound, 5:09 min. Imagecourtesy the artist.


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Striking ContrastsExhibition Overview

Contemporary Australian society reflectstwo distinctive and often contradictorycultural expressions. One is brought aboutby the profoundly beautiful emptiness that

fills the void at the centre of the country.The other emerges out of the multicultural,highly technical and globalised cities dottingthe periphery of the vast, silent landscape,providing striking contrast.

Over the past decade, the availability ofrelatively inexpensive digital technology hasmeant that artists whose primary mediumof expression maybe painting, sculpture orphotography are now equally at ease workingcreatively with a HD digital camera and alaptop computer.

The result has been a proliferation ofmoving image works seen in galleries andmuseums around Australia by artists seekingto expand their expressive concerns into newconfigurations for the screen. These includeworks that are often minimalist in design withemphasis placed on the exploration of space,time and screen surface.

Other artists are drawn to experimentingwith the traditional conventions of cinema,narrative form and the exploration of the linksbetween the aesthetics and materiality of themedium of film itself.

The digital film works produced by theseartists are characterised by pushing theboundaries of what we might understand tobe a documentary or narrative film. Otherswork with existing or found footage to rework

into something completely new.

Striking Contrastsexplores these two paralleland distinctive aesthetic tendencies that haveemerged out of film and video art practicein the Australian contemporary art scene inrecent years.

The video artworks in the exhibition havebeen divided into two groups, displayed onparallel screens to encourage viewers to

compare and move between the works.

Joan Ross, BBQ this Sunday, BYO, 2011, digitalanimation, stereo sound, 6:00 min. Image courtesy theartist and Michael ReidJohn Gillies, Road Movie (part 1), 2008, High Definitiondigital video, stereo sound, 9:00 min. Image courtesy

the artistNicola Walkerden, CINAMNESIA, 2012, 16mm film/digitalvideo, stereo sound, 5:09 min. Image courtesy theartist.Deborah Kelly, Beastliness, 2011, digital animation,stereo sound, 3:17 min. Image courtesy the artist and


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Paul Winkler

Paul Winkler is a German-born Australian filmmakerwho lives and works in Sydney. He was associatedwith Corinne and Arthur Cantrill, Albie Thoms andDavid Perry in pioneering local experimental filmproduction in the 1960s.

In 1995, the Museum of Contemporary Artand Sydney Intermedia Network mounted aretrospective screening of 30 of his films. Thefollowing year, the Carpenter Center for the VisualArts, Harvard University, USA screened 30 films in

a three-day retrospective. The Museum of ModernArt in New York, USA holds 15 of his films in theircollection.

Drums and Trains, 200916mm film/digital video, stereo sound,12:00 minimage courtesy the artist

In Paul Winklers highly personal 16mm film,Drums and Trains,a seemingly innocentchilds toy train and the ominous soundsdrawn from archival footage of a boy-soldierstriking a drum are looped, masked andreprinted across the screen surface of thework. These techniques have been perfected

by Winkler over a span of forty years ofexperimental filmmaking and reflect a finebalance struck between technical virtuosityand emotional resonance.

Drums and Trainsis also marked by therepetition of the sound of the boy strikingthe drum as the emphatic forward movementof the toy train intensifies and becomesincreasingly abstracted and disturbed asthe film surface begins to blister and burn.

The sounds of gunshots are heard throughthe clickity-clack of the train tracks as thefinal destination of the toy train is revealed:The Auschwitz extermination camp. The boy-soldiers fateful drum beats echo from LeniReifenstahls 1934 film, Triumph of the Will.

Screen Group 1


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Tony Lawrence

For the past eight years Australian filmmaker TonyLawrence has been working almost exclusively with8mm and 16mm found footage and home movies.He now has a collection over 300 films which barethe physical effects of time, chemical decay, andeven rot and mould which he further manipulatesto create new works that draw attention to themateriality of the medium. His work has won manyUnderground Film Festival awards.

Tony says the affect of decay, grit and damageon these films often forms the context of howI piece together these works. He goes on tocompose strangely haunting electronic soundtracksand use various transfer techniques to conveydifferent moods and create these dreamlikeexplorations of memory and time.

Girl on Fire, 2009Super 8 film/digital video, stereosound, 2:00 minimage courtesy the artist

This found footage 8mm news reel film ofunderwater ballet has a red rust effect flowingthrough it. Known as oxidation reductionreaction or Redox it is usually caused byperoxides emanating from aging wood foundin film cardboard storage boxes. A sparse

piano and electronic soundtrack adds to thelanguid pace.

White Sands, 2010Super 8 film/digital video, stereosound, 6:55 minimage courtesy the artist

This found footage film is a home moviedated 1948. A young family plays in thegypsum dunes of White Sands. A hauntingelectronica soundtrack and an opaque skyadd to the dream-like landscape as figureswistfully play.

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John Conomos

John Conomos is an artist, critic and theorist whoworks across video art, new media, installation,photo-performance and radiophonic art. A recentmixed-media installation entitled Shipwreckat theUniversity of Queensland Art Museum embodiesConomoss abiding passion for classical cinemawhile at the same time, is a cross-disciplinarymeditation on art, ageing and mortality. Conomosis a prolific contributor to art, film and mediajournals, conferences, seminars and symposiaand co-editor of an anthology on Rethinking theContemporary Art School(NASCAD UniversityPress, 2010).

Lake George (After Rothko), 2007digital video, stereo sound, 10:00 minimage courtesy the artist

As a child during the fifties I would visit mymothers cousins at Goulburn and Canberra

by car. Between these two locations I becameaware through my parents and relativestalking about this mysterious lake that wouldever so often disappear. How is this possible?A lake that would vanish from the face of theearth. Consequently, Lake George has alwayshad a talismanic value for me as a metaphorfor creativity.

Landscape as something that emerges fromthe invisible to the visible. The artist as

someone who voyages irrespective of theirart form between these two essential realmsof life and light/vision.

I have always been attracted to a sense ofplace. Landscape as lifescape, soundscape,tastescape, and memoryscape. As a genre ofart, despite certain current views that it is atraditionally conservative genre, it need notbe. Far from it. For me landscape has alwaysbeen critical to my biography, culture andthought. Landscape is, as I see and hear it,something that lies, to evoke Jean-FrancoisLyotard, beyond the cultivated zone. Beyondthe law of genre.

John Conomos

Screen Group 1


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Deborah Kelly

Deborah Kelly is a Melbourne-born, Sydney-basedartist whose works have been shown in streets,skies and galleries around Australia, the Singaporeand Venice Biennales, and elsewhere. She beganmaking socially engaged artwork in 1983. Hercollaborative projects include boat-people.organdthe prize-winning public artwork series Hey, hetero!,created with Tina Fiveash. Her work Beware ofthe God- commissioned by the Museum ofContemporary Art, Sydney, and first shown in 2005- was reiterated for the 2008 Singapore Biennale.

Deborah Kelly is represented by Gallery BarryKeldoulis.

Beastliness, 2011digital animation, stereo sound, 3:17minimage courtesy the artist & Gallery Barry Keldoulis

Collage as a medium has always been avehicle by which to explore political andsocial concerns.

Kelly, in this series of work, isre-contextualising the militant strategies ofearly feminism. The message is as much inthe history of the medium itself, the awkwardancestries that it just cant shake. In oneseries squawking birds prick the smooth andhairless veneer of raunch culture. In another,furry girls stare out through waves and a fieldof follicles.

Chopped-up, constructed beauties from thevalley of the hirsute. In a world obsessedwith luxury, outfits, the right haircuts, shoesand the aspiration to live the right type oflife, Kelly creates not just something new butforces us to understand through the hyperrealand the hard core, that satire is always hard

to swallow.

Glenn BarkleyThe rough and the smooth, Deborah Kellycatalogue, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, May 2011.

Screen Group 2Screen Group 1


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Nicola Walkerden

Nicola Walkerden is a screen-based performanceartist and filmmaker whose interdisciplinarypractice explores juxtaposing relationships between

structures, the body, landscapes and the unknown.Current works can be seen as a series ofdream documentaries conjuring up a multiplicityof meanings to engage with. Investigating theliminal connections between mind and body andextreme states of the inner and collective psyche,Walkerden applies performance as a process ofactions to test spaces and scan the body.

Walkerden is a graduate of a Master of Film andDigital Image, the Sydney College of the Arts(SCA), has a Bachelor of Fine Arts, the College of

Fine Arts and is currently studying for a Masterof Fine Arts by research at SCA. Works have beenexhibited in Sydney galleries and screened atRevelation Perth International Film Festival, SydneyUnderground Film Festival, Brisbane UndergroundFilm Festival and Del Corazon Film Festival.

CINAMNESIA, 201216mm film/digital video, stereo sound,5:09 minimage courtesy the artist

CINAMNESIAdraws links between the twenty-four vertebrae in the human spine and thetwenty-four frames per second in 16mm filmwhilst exploring the effects of film on thenervous system.

With black and white performance anddocumentary footage misplacing experiencesof time and movement, there is anexamination of the spine and the materialityof film from both scientific and surrealist

perspectives. Illusion is questioned throughthe portrayal of anaesthesia as an inducedexperiential state similar to that of choosingto sit in a cinema. It examines the processof watching film, questioning how presentan experience it is, along with the nature ofrecording.

Structurally the film is considered as abackbone holding images that are re-recordedby the audience every time its played.

The cave as a primal root of cinema isreferenced, hand-drawn as if to be a reminderof how histories are recorded throughmovement, distorted by perceptions.

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The Wall, 2009High Definition digital video, stereosound, 7:00 minimage courtesy the artist

The Wallis an abstraction of an everydayscene, an ocean pool against an oceanbackdrop at high tide, under the onslaughtof a set of waves. The rotation of the pictureplane, organic motion of the water, and

underlying geometry of the pool allow thisscene to slip unhinged into abstraction; avolatile picture plane, akin to a continuallyoscillating, collapsing, disintegrating colourfield painting.

Both compositionally and conceptuallythe contest in the work is between andwithin chaos and order, separation anddisintegration, segregation and exuberantcollapse. The wall itself is built to demarcatethe Bondi Icebergs ocean pool from theocean, providing comparative shelter and aconceptual separation of a body of water.The work pitches that which we can controlagainst, and within, that which ultimately wecannot.

The wall is presented at its bare functionalessentials, splitting the image vertically downthe centre while it demarcates the pool fromthe ocean. It at once fulfils this functionand fails to do so. Interspersed with periods

of calm resolution, the force of the wavesrepeatedly breaches and transgresses thewalls authority and wipes out the notionof separation, collapsing the screen intohomogenous heaving whiteout.

Jess MacNeil

Jess MacNeil works at the points of intersectionbetween painting, installation, video andphotography, often taking as her subject matterthe dynamics of the human/environmentrelationship. Her paintings and video works explorethe visible and invisible influences that govern theway we perceive and inhabit the world, presentingan emphatically subjective visual translation ofthe amorphous shape of our relationship to our

surroundings and to one another.

MacNeil has exhibited widely internationallyand within Australia. Her work was included inPrimaveraat the Museum of Contemporary Art,Sydney and the Samstag Museum of Art in 2008and was presented at the Tokyo MetropolitanMuseum of Photography, the Museum ofContemporary Art, San Diego, and the Museum ofContemporary Art, Sydney, in 2009.

Screen Group 2


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Joan Ross

Joan Ross combines an ecclectic mix of visualstyles, from traditional landscape sceneriescollaged against cartoon-like figures. Throughthese uncomfortable settings, she navigates theviewer through unsettling themes, encouraging usto rethink the impact of colonisation, imperialism,racism, consumerism and our disposable culture.

Ross is interested in the retelling of historyand the consequential lies and bias that ensue.Through her work, she aims to enlighten peopleto the prejudices that she sees in contemporaryAustralia.

Joan Ross is represented by Michael Reid.

BBQ this Sunday, BYO, 2011digital animation, stereo sound, 6:00minimage courtesy the artist & Michael Reid

Joan Ross is an artist with a long history ofdissecting Australias colonial past. Her worksinclude sculpture and installation, painting,drawing and video. In her recent series, BBQthis Sunday, BYO, Ross returns to this themewith a series of colonialist adaptations of thepaintings of Joseph Lycett, an English convicttransported for the crime of forgery.

There are many strange contradictions

in Ross work: the contrast between theacronymic title and the traditional appearanceof the work, the juxtaposition of the serenityof the picnic scene with the lurid hi-vis worn

by the subjects, even the idea that Australiasviolent colonial past could be brokeredthrough the friendly cultural ritual of anAustralian barbeque. It is ironic thatthrough the forgery of paintings by a forger,Ross analyses the clash of traditionallandscape, colonial politics and contemporarylandscapes.

In this video piece Ross examines theharsh realities and effects of colonisationon the Aboriginal people, which developedamongst the blind prospering of their colonialcounterparts. The hi-vis yellow symbolisesmodernisation, development and Europeanexpansion, something initially glaringly outof place that expands to dominate thelandscape. Ross utilises this hi-vis symbol assomething that originally signifies danger butthen is transformed into the commonplaceand ordinary.

As the film progresses hi-vis expands in theancient landscape as more guests appear,bringing their own artefacts of civilisation.As the crowd around the BBQ grows, thefluorescence that at first seemed out of placebecomes almost natural. Important figuresfrom Australian colonial history arrive, yellow-cladded but empty handed. As the BBQprogresses the fluorescent colours turn into

spirographs that hide a small pox moleculethat will cause devastation amongst theAboriginal people. However, the spirographsthen turn into fireworks and the sound ofcelebration can be heard.

Screen Group 2Screen Group 2


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Angelica Mesiti

Angelica Mesiti is a video, performance andinstallation artist based in Sydney and Paris.Angelicas video works use cinematic frameworksand performance to re-tell histories andreconfigure conventional truths. Central to herapproach is an interest in responding to theparticularities of a given location, its history,environment and communities.

Angelica Mesiti is represented by Anna SchwartzGallery.

Rapture (silent anthem), 2009single-channel High Definition video,colour, silent, 10:10 minimage courtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery

Angelica Mesitis work Rapture (silent anthem)reflects on the spirituality and presence ofritual experiences in contemporary life. Itsa slow-motion video of young people at anopen-air concert. The work transmits thequasi-religious atmosphere with various close-ups, capturing the worshipping eyes, ecstaticexpressions and hysterical gestures of theteenagers, emphasising their pure and primalemotions. Mesiti manages to transmit thefeeling of the collective state of the crowd,people becoming one without capturing all ofthem in one frame. On the contrary, it showstheir individual experiences, rhythmically andemotionally synchronized.

Raptureis a silent video that takes anexperience of a musical event out of its basiccontext, making the viewer focus on the visualcontent of the work, and understanding itsemotional and aesthetic intensity. The viewer,pulled in and fascinated, unintentionallybecomes part of this collective moment, which

turns into an endless rapture.

Elena VasilevaVideonale 13 catalogue

Screen Group 2


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John Gillies

John Gillies is an artist who works primarilywith time-based media and forms such asvideo, performance, installation and music. Theexploration of sound and image relationships, and

collaboration with performers has been central tohis work. Those collaborators have included TheSydney Front, Clare Grant, Jon Rose, Matt Prestand Tess de Quincey.

Road Movie (part 1), 2008High Definition digital video, stereosound, 9:00 minimage courtesy the artist

John Gillies Road Movie (part 1)is about

cars: a portrait of a seething mass of steel-cased bubbles and the people inside themwho are hurtled along at high speeds only tocome to a crashing halt and find themselvesstuck in the drawn out nothing time of thetraffic jam. Its a collage of the small gesturesof driving that flesh out this everyday activityand the collections of objects that fill theworld of cars, the worlds we create withincars. Its a video about cultural attachmentto the car, the identification of self with cars.

It invokes the grand twentieth century dreamof taking the exit lane, hitting the open road,escaping, moving, changing, moving on Andits about the end of that road.

A world without cars is it a dream or anightmare? It is precisely this question thatdrives the protagonist of Gillies road movieas he takes the exit lane and, like manytravelers before him, heads away from thecity and out on to the open road.

Therese DavisVideo Logic catalogue, Museum of ContemporaryArt, Sydney, 2008, pp. 45.

Screen Group 2


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Baby Please Dont Go, 2004digital video, stereo sound, 4:22 minimage courtesy the artist & Gallery Barry Keldoulis

Baby Please Dont Go casts a small fragmentof a scene from the film Apocalypse Nowinto a seemingly endless loop. It shows MartinSheens character moving backwards and

forwards in a methodical, trance-like dance toa Led Zeppelin song.

At first his movements seem to match therhythm of the music. However, through itsincessant repetition and internal looping,the dance becomes increasingly at oddswith the uninhibited ideological and formalcharacteristics of the song.

Grant Stevens

Grant Stevens explores how we understand,construct and communicate our subjectivitiesand interpersonal relationships, especially howthe languages of our screen realities shapeour constructions of self and disseminations ofmeaning.

Since graduating from Brisbanes QueenslandUniversity of Technology in 2002, thepredominantly video artist has referenced footage,sound and text from Hollywoods entertainmentindustries to question the effect of popular cultureon our beliefs, sense of identity and decisionmaking processes.

Grant Stevens is represented by Gallery BarryKeldoulis.

Screen Group 2


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List of Works

Screen Group One

Paul WinklerDrums and Trains200916mm film/digital video, stereo sound, 12:00min

Tony LawrenceGirl on Fire2009Super 8 film/digital video, stereo sound, 2:00min

Tony LawrenceWhite Sands

2010Super 8 film/digital video, stereo sound, 6:55min

John ConomosLake George (After Rothko)2007digital video, stereo sound, 10:00 min

Deborah Kelly

Beastliness2011digital animation, stereo sound, 3:17 minDeborah Kelly is represented by Gallery BarryKeldoulis

Nicola WalkerdenCINAMNESIA201216mm film/digital video, stereo sound, 5:09min

Screen Group Two

Jess MacNeilThe Wall2009

High Definition digital video, stereo sound, 7:00min

Joan RossBBQ this Sunday, BYO2011digital animation, stereo sound, 6:00 minJoan Ross is represented by Michael Reid

Angelica MesitiRapture (silent anthem)

2009single-channel High Definition video, colour,silent,10:10 minAngelica Mesiti is represented by Anna SchwartzGallery

John GilliesRoad Movie (part 1)2008High Definition digital video, stereo sound, 9:00

min

Grant StevensBaby Please Dont Go2004digital video, stereo sound, 4:22 minGrant Stevens is represented by Gallery BarryKeldoulis


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Advanced Focus Questions

1. Jess MacNeils work uses a mix of styles including painting, installation, video andphotography. In many ways the term video art could be considered misleading. Why do youthink that this might be?

2. Today video screens and projections are everywhere from mobile phones to the sides ofbuildings. To quote artist and critic Catherine Elwes, video is the default medium of the 21stCentury. Do you agree and if so, how have technological advancements influenced this?

3. As video has become more easily accessible on devices such as our mobile phones, laptopsand tablets, how do you think this affects the way we value video art? Do you consider video

art any more or less valuable when compared to traditional artforms such as painting ordrawing, and why?

4. When you go to the cinema to see a film, it has a start or session time. This differs fromvideos shown in galleries. Why do you think that is? Does the screening environment makeyou view or consider the video in a different way?

5. Australian arts writer, Daniel Palmer has noted the immediacy and intimacy of the mediumof video for both artists and viewers. What do you think he means by this? Consider howtechnology can be immediate and intimate.

6. Some artists upload their video art to YouTube, while others create a limited number ofeditions for people to buy and own. What might be the advantages and disadvantages ofeach of these methods of distribution?

Questions & Activities

Intermediate Focus Questions

1. Compare Striking Contraststo another exhibition you have recently seen that includesartworks of traditional media such as painting, drawing, or craft objects. What makes videoart different to other art?

2. Some of the videos include music and sounds. How does this affect the way you feel whenyou watch the videos?

3. Choose one video work from Striking Contrastsand compare it with your favourite movie ortelevision show. What are some of the differences?

4. John Conomos and Jess McNeils videos are both of landscapes. What have they done tomake the landscape appear different?

5. Tony Lawrences White Sandsis an old home video of a family playing together on sanddunes. Imagine that you are going to make your own home video and film your family orfriends. What would you film them doing? Where would they be? What equipment would youuse to record them?

6. Many of the artists in this exhibition use old videos and photographs in their work. How docameras and video cameras help us capture our lives and create memories? How is thisdifferent to painting, drawing or writing about a memory?


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7. Some artists display their work on small screens while others create large projection-basedinstallations. How does the style of presentation affect the way you feel about the work?

8. A number of artists in the Striking Contrastsexhibition use analogue film and found footage,including Paul Winkler, Tony Lawrence and Nicola Walkerden. Compare this approach withthose shot with digital video, such as Angelica Mesiti or John Gillies. Comment on thedifferences.

9. Deborah Kellys video works have been collected and she is represented by the art dealerGallery Barry Keldoulis. Consider what is different about the process of collecting andacquiring video artwork and what new requirements need to be considered by collectors orinstitutions.

10. Consider the work by Grant Stevens, Baby Please Dont Go. How is this different from a musicvideo?

11. John Conomos says that his video is inspired by childhood memories of Lake George.Consider the composition and style of Lake George (After Rothko). How does this relate tolandscape as lifescape, soundscape, tastescape and memoryscape? Research the artist Mark

Rothko and identify the similarities and differences between his painting style and that ofJohn Conomos.

12. Digital media crosses the boundaries of technology and art. Examine the work of Joan Ross,BBQ this Sunday, BYO. Do you see the technology or the art? Do the methods of productionobscure the message?

13. Think of your favourite movie, music video or documentary film. How does it compare tothe videos included in this exhibition? Consider factors such as content, characters, style offilming and presentation of the video.

Additional Resources

Striking Contrasts website:http://netsaustralia.org.au/whats-on/striking-contrasts/

Katherine Berger, Direct-On-Found Footage Filmmaking: Mining the debris of image consumption& co-directing with nature, Journal of Media Arts Culture, Volume 10 No.1, 2013:http://scan.net.au/scn/journal/vol10number1/Katherine-Berger.html

Text and reviews on John Gillies:http://johngillies.com/texts

Glenn Barkley, The rough and the smooth, Deborah Kelly catalogue, Gallery Barry Keldoulis:http://www.gbk.com.au/files/dk_gbk_cat_webSM.pdf

Artist Interview with Grant Stevens, Artists Voice, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btbUCtx4z6o

Grant Stevens in Conversation with Paul Young, L.A Louver, 19 January 2013:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4aG2ncVfCM

Angelica Mesiti, Videonale 13,http://archiv.videonale.org/1/videothek/m/mesiti/


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Writers Biographies

Diana SmithDiana Smith studied Fine Arts (Time Based Art) and Arts (Film Studies) and completed Media,Film & Theatre Honours (Class 1) at the University of New South Wales. She has worked atPerformance Space, Sydney, sat on the board of various artist-run initiatives and has curatedseveral video and performance based exhibitions.

Therese DavisSenior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at Monash University. Teresa is the author of TheFace on the Screen: Death Recognition and Spectatorship(Intellect, 2004) and co-author withFelicity Collins of Australian Cinema After Mabo(Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Glenn BarkleyGlenn Barkley is Curator at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and was previously curator ofthe University of Wollongong Art collection from 1996 - 2007. Barkley has written extensively onAustralian contemporary art and has a particular interest in prints, multiples and ephemera.

A Brief History of Video Art - References

1. Catherine Elwes, Video Art: a Guided Tour,I.B. Taurus, London/New York, 2005, p.1

2. John Conomos, Mutant Media: Essays on Cinema, Video Art and New Media, Artspace &Power Publications, Sydney, 2007, p. 97

3. Russell Storer, Video Logic, Video Logic (Catalogue), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney,2008, p.9

4. Michael Rush, Video Art, Thames & Hudson, London, 2003, p.7

5. John Conomos, Ibid, p. 101

6. Jacqueline Millner, Home Movie: Australian Pioneers and their Contemporary Legacy, Art &Australia, Vol. 45, No.2, 2007, p. 254

7. Peter Callas, Australian Video Art & Australian Identity A Personal View, Continuum 83:The 1st Exhibition of Australian Contemporary Art in Japan (Catalogue), Tokyo: Japan-Australia Cultural & Arts Exchange Committee, 1983, unpaginated

8. Stephen Jones, Some Notes on the Early History of the Independent Video Scene inAustralia, The First Australian Video Festival (Catalogue), Sydney, 1988, p.23

9. Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel, Digital Remix: The Art and Craft of EndlessHybridization, Keynote presented to the International Reading Association Pre-ConferenceInstitute, Using Technology to Develop and Extend the Boundaries of Literacy, Toronto, 13May 2007

10. Daniel Palmer, Medium without a memory: Australian Video art, Broadsheet, 33, 2004, p.21

11. Palmer, p.21

12. Stuart Koop and Max Delany, in Palmer, p.21

13. Palmer, p.20

Documents

Striking Contrasts Educational Resource