Stereo Sequences
People of Melbourne! Listen up.
There is a fine exhibition occurring in your fine city and I am feeling rather envious because I will not get a chance to see it. Therefore, I command you to go forth and see it for me. It’d be doing both of us a favour.
Shaun Gladwell: Stereo Sequences
Shaun Gladwell is one of my (and much of the world’s) favourite Australian contemporary artists. He works in video, usually in slow motion, producing videos that are transfixing and poetic. You may recognise him for one of these works, both of which have been shown in Brisbane, either at the IMA or at GoMA, in the last year.
Shaun Gladwell | Pataphysical Man | 2005
Shaun Gladwell | Storm Sequence, Bondi Beach | 2000
Stereo Sequences is a solo exhibition of Gladwell’s work, commissioned by ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image, located in Fed Square), and features what could only be described as stereo video: videoing videoing.
He’s actually brilliant and this is a fascinating idea.
The pieces in this exhibition were filmed in improvised as well as highly choreographed settings across urban and rural Australia, Japan, Brazil, France and Afghanistan
One that I have heard about features two Australian army helicopters, filming as they shift in relation to each other, flying across an arid landscape.
Just reading about the exhibition, I’ve come across that word - ‘performative’ - that I mentioned in my last post. Excuse me while I refer to my notes.
“The paradoxical relationship between the medium as a conveyor of ‘true’ physical facts and an authorially manipulated, virtual frame”, as Raoul Eshelman, primary writer on performatism in post-postmodern art, puts it.
But it’s more than that, I think; more than a paradox and more something like a coexistence. The happy coexistence of “‘true’ physical facts” and a very obviously constructed, filmic creation.
Gladwell’s works very much focus on the physical. Physical skill, prowess, finesse, precision, control, and yet there is this otherworldly quality to his work that verges on the hypnotic. And his audience is very happy with the coexistence of these two elements; indeed it is where the powerfulness of his work comes from.
They’re wonderful, I really hope you go and see them. It’s on until 14 Auguest at ACMI.
