the One of Us Cannot Be Wrong catalogue

Centre for
Contemporary
Photography
One of Us
Cannot
Be Wrong
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
1
­ irst published on the occasion of the exhibition
F
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
Curated by Karra Rees
Centre for Contemporary Photography
Melbourne 31 October –13 December 2008
Produced and published by
Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George Street
Fitzroy, Victoria 3065
Australia
www.ccp.org.au
Centre for
Contemporary
Photography
One of Us
Cannot
Be Wrong
© Centre for Contemporary Photography 2008,
the artists and authors
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical (including photocopying,
recording or any information retrieval system), without
permission from the publisher.
Editor: Karra Rees
Designer: Danny Jacobsen
Printer: Rothfield Print Management
Edition: 500
ISBN 978-0-9804454-4-2 (pbk.)
Front cover
Pipilotti Rist Open My Glade (Flatten) 2000 (detail)
single channel digital video installation, silent
9 min 52 sec, dimensions variable (video still) Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
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One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
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Contents
Introduction
02
Foreword Naomi Cass
03
Introduction Karra Rees
04
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong Karra Rees
09
How to Look Amazing in Photographs Amanda Maxwell
11
One Night in Paris Justin Clemens
14
I Want Time to Slow Down Darren Sylvester
39
List of Works
40
Artist Biographies
41
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Naomi Cass
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong ushers into Centre for Contemporary
Photography a welcome and long awaited meditation on
contemporary mass media, celebrity and communication. One of Us
Cannot Be Wrong cuts a swathe through commodity capitalism—
sketching a landscape of popular music videos, magazines, big
screens and billboards—against which many people construct
their identity.
Firstly, the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL): Cultural Fund has
generously enabled production of this catalogue. Supporting One of
Us Cannot Be Wrong is a wonderful gesture from CAL that counts
amongst its members many practicing photographers. In support of
the exhibition, I also thank Scanlan & Theodore and Roy, for whom
identity formation is of particular interest. Enabling visitors to take a
seat, I thank Move-in for their comfortable, in kind support.
In full appreciation of both the seductive and destructive logic of
celebrity culture, CCP Curator, Karra Rees deftly brings together
artists working in photomedia from Australia and abroad, many
exhibiting at CCP for the first time. Exhibiting across three spaces
including CCP’s Night Projection Window are Sarah Baker (USA/
UK), Philip Brophy, Sue Dodd, Kate Murphy, Pipilotti Rist (CH),
Darren Sylvester and Kellie Wells.
Projection technology is a longstanding issue for arts organisations
and for an informal community of support from other organisations, I
thank Monash University Museum of Art and The Ian Potter Museum
of Art.
Photomedia literally enables the world as a stage for the
performance of personal identity driven by individualism and yet
underwritten by mass media. In the hands of contemporary artists,
performance artists, photographers and video artists, photomedia is
twisted back upon itself in both respect and disgust, creating new
meanings with old material.
I would like to thank valued supporters with whom we have worked
over many years, Crumpler, Kodak Professional, Sofitel and Tint
Design. And with great pleasure I acknowledge new supporters.
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One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
Karra Rees
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong addresses self-representation and
the navigation of identity in an increasingly media-saturated,
technology-dependant and celebrity-obsessed Western society.
Presenting the work of seven artists from Australia and abroad, the
exhibition explores the impact of these phenomena on self-esteem,
self-realisation and ‘finding one’s place in the world’.
Sarah Baker (USA/UK)
Never before have individuals been so heavily scrutinised under the
photographic gaze. As video surveillance and digital photography
have become more and more ubiquitous, the idea of ‘authentic’
identity has become correspondingly problematic. In our increasingly
interconnected and commercially driven visual environment, where
interactions and disclosures are often experienced remotely,
opportunities for fluid and adaptive self-representation and
expression have grown. For a generation obsessed with youth and
celebrity, conditioned to ape their idols and strive for unattainable
ideals, the contemporary ‘self’ today risks becoming a cipher for
inflated and manufactured icons; an amalgam of fluid and fickle
ideals, smoke and mirrors.
Darren Sylvester (AUS)
Philip Brophy (AUS)
Sue Dodd (AUS)
Kate Murphy (AUS)
Pipilotti Rist (CH)
Kellie Wells (AUS)
Curated by Karra Rees
Photomedia’s ability to seamlessly traverse these boundaries
of reality and fantasy makes it an effective agent of deception.
Accordingly, the artists in this exhibition self-reflexively employ
photography and video to both critique and contribute to popular
culture’s commodification of identity. Co-opting the commercial
world’s media of choice, they each respond to the tropes of popular
culture, its documentation and dissemination, and its power to
enrich and dull our lives.
Parallel to the exhibited work, Karra Rees has included two fictional
texts within this catalogue, from Darren Sylvester (also exhibiting
in One of Us Cannot Be Wrong) and Amanda Maxwell. Both short
fiction pieces skillfully weave issues raised by the exhibition whilst
evoking the photographic. In his essay One Night in Paris Justin
Clemens reflects on celebrity culture and mass media in a manner
both light and dark, a splendid accompaniment to the exhibition. I
thank the curator, artists and writers.
For me the question arises, is there some redemptive intent in the
work exhibited in One of Us Cannot Be Wrong or are we left an
infinite dance between being attracted to and repulsed by
celebrity culture.
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
5
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
Karra Rees
Does Leonard Cohen’s 1967 song title imply that one of us must,
by deductive reasoning, be right? Is there always a right and
wrong? If his ‘us’ here represents the complete landscape of an
individual’s identities and internal dialogues, Cohen’s words can be
read as a metaphor for a twenty-first century model of transient
self-representation and competing inner-selves. A paradigm
where divisions between reality and fantasy become increasingly
blurred as our multiplicity of identities dissolve and interchange
with adaptive protean flow. But can only one lay claim to being the
‘authentic’ self?
The ubiquity of photography and surveillance in the contemporary
landscape invites us to constantly perform for the camera, as we
propel ourselves into an exciting, technologically-advanced future.
There is a new language and a new mode of communication for
this century. Shelley Rice suggests that ‘identity is selected by
the individual, in response to outside signs and pressures, as a
mode of communication,’ and that to some degree, ‘we are all
Cindy Shermans’.1 Indeed, exploration of identity characterises a
rich vein of current investigation in much contemporary artistic
practice. Photo-based practice­—more sensitive to technological
advancement than other media such as painting or drawing—
presents itself as the ideal vehicle with which to explore such issues
of polymorphous identity, and the medium has indeed been used to
great effect by the seven artists in this exhibition.
Sue Dodd’s performances and videos echo the call of the tabloid.
Incorporating reports of celebrities without make-up, their bad-hair
days, excessive weight-gain and plastic surgery gone wrong—Dodd
divulges the secrets of the stars and drowns their sorrows in satire.
Relaying the sordid stories of fallen idols, she exposes the lure
of tabloids and the thirst for intimacy with celebrities. Carefully
cutting-out famous figures from popular magazines to star in her
videos, and using their text as ‘gossippop’ lyrics, she collaborates
with her brother Phil Dodd to produce original music and imagery.
Accentuating the ludicrous nature of these sensationalist stories,
Dodd performs alongside her two-dimensional co-stars, singing in
a sexy, but suitably concerned voice, re-telling their tragic tales in
catchy, pop verse. Breakups, diets, pregnancies, scandals and stints
in rehab are old news by the time Dodd records them, making her
repetitive, monotone headline catch-cries echo with vacuity. New
Weekly graciously supplies the lyrics while Dodd acts as a social
agent, bringing into question our preoccupation with the lives of
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One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
strangers: Is It True? Britney is selling her bra on Ebay… Joan
Collins is totally bald… Robbie Williams peed on a stranger… Elvis
and Oprah are related… Madonna’s got BO… Britney’s pregnancy
test is for sale…
Britney Spears is also the obsession of 11-year-old Brittaney Love.
Kate Murphy met Brittaney in Glasgow in 2000 when she became
her nanny and the two bonded over their mutual fascination with
Spears. Britney Love (2000) features footage of the child mimicking
Spears’ choreographed dance routines. She changes outfits several
times and earnestly incorporates sexualised, adult movements and
sultry expressions that have clearly been studied in detail. On an
accompanying audio track Brittaney sings Spears’ popular song
‘Crazy’, and also provides a candid commentary on her life. While
she discusses school, friends, boys and of course Britney Spears,
her main preoccupation is popularity. She is completely comfortable
playing up to the camera and divulging all. The work has a darkly
comical side, as it pervasively reveals the extent to which the
private inner-life of this impressionable young girl is fused with the
exaggerated public persona of the pop star. Her sense of self is
modeled on Spears, and around her dreams of stardom.
Directly referencing Michael Apted’s influential Up Series—an ongoing documentary project following the lives of 14 British children—
Murphy returned to Glasgow seven years later to film Brittaney as
an adult.2 Presenting herself as though she were auditioning for a
reality television series such as ‘Idol’, Brittaney, now 18, introduces
herself and proudly performs a song she has written. Viewers are
once again privy to Brittaney’s private world as she talks directly to
her audience about her plans to become a singer. She muses aloud
on the impact fame will have on her identity and how people who
know her might react to this.
The influence and prevalence of contemporary modes of
documentary are a focal point of Murphy’s practice. Eroding divisions
between public and private, this work identifies a generation
accustomed to performing for the camera; for whom moving image
is a natural part of the physical and cultural landscape. The ubiquity
of reality television and ‘star search’ programs has convinced society
that fame is within the grasp of everyday people.
Popular television comes under scrutiny in work by Philip Brophy
as well. An on-going and multifarious project, Evaporated Music
2: At the Mouth of Metal (2006–2008) continues and extends his
‘aural surgery performed on the audiovisual skin of mainstream
iconic videos’ initiated in Evaporated Music 1 (2000–2004).3
Appropriating found footage, Brophy feeds his audience familiar
sanitised television programs, with selected scenes from popular
family-oriented TV series in which manufactured, sickly-sweet
teenagers perform in pop-rock bands. With careful observation
he re-writes the lyrical content—with words that, when lip-read
closely resemble the originals—whilst also transmuting the musical
component. As the teen actors open their mouths, they are reduced
to self-parody. A cacophonous rendering of this synthetic opus
reduces it to doggerel, disturbing the visual environment and
subverting stereotypes and codes. In a battle between good and
evil, pure and corrupt, Brophy strips them of their squeaky-clean
image, as the antithesis of their saccharine sound emanates all
around in Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. His new compositions
and voiceovers transform the pop plasticity into dark, heavy metal
filth; upturning the world of vacuous televised pop, and revealing
a dark underbelly throbbing with prime evil. Like Sandra Dee with
Tourette’s—“Lap dance choking whore” spills out with a smile.
The aesthetic of music videos and popular culture is particularly
evident in the practice of Pipilotti Rist. Revealing the extraordinary
in the ordinary and everyday, her work comprises an amalgam of
sensually confronting imagery and vivid colour that articulates an
open-ended vision of femininity and identity. Rist often appears in
her own work that frequently focuses on the body and regularly
incorporates unusual installations.4
Open My Glade (Flatten) (2000) is comprised of a series of oneminute videos, originally exhibited on the National Broadcasting
Company Astrovision screen in New York’s Times Square. Set
amidst the blinking lights, beeping horns, billboard advertisements
and busy commuters, the single segments were interspersed
with regular commercial programming. In this urban context,
Rist’s videos were an intervention into the world of mass-media
representation, taking over the physical domain usually occupied
by market-driven content.
Through the Night Projection Window at Centre for Contemporary
Photography, Rist looks out over the busy street, larger-than-life.
With her face pressed up against the screen, she stares defiantly
down at the viewer, seemingly trying to communicate. Slowing
down and speeding up, she drags her face across the glass that
separates her from the street below—both protecting and trapping
Philip Brophy Evaporated Music 2: At the Mouth of Metal 2006–2008 (b) Lap Dance Choking Whore
(detail) single channel digital video with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, 2 min, dimensions variable (video still)
her. Exercising her emotions, like a bored child she twists and
stretches her skin over its smooth surface in a humorous and often
uncomfortable manner, smearing the screen. Exuding sensuality,
beauty, angst, anger and energy, her deliberately contorted and
exaggerated face often makes it difficult to read her temperament.
Parodying the commercial world’s codes and customs, and
promoting emotion rather than consumerism, slogans appear
momentarily on the screen: ‘I’m Not Perfect, That’s Perfect’; ‘Help
Me To Be Honest’; ‘No Screen Can Keep Us Apart’; ‘I Want To Be
Guilty’. Expressing a kaleidoscopic array of emotions and various
different physical incarnations, her work invites reflection on
constructions and representations of femininity and identity.
Also investigating this dichotomy of internal states and external
appearance, Kellie Wells examines the machinations of identity and
female stereotyping, reminding viewers that they are often judged
by how they look. In classic and impeccable make-up, replete
with pink lipstick, long thick false eyelashes and wrapped-up hair,
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
7
art and reality, she investigates the lure of fame, and the grip of
consumerism through her staged performances as a self-appointed,
manufactured celebrity. Baker invites speculation about how fame
and fortune are achieved, highlighting the current phenomena
of fashionable figures, famous simply for being famous. Posing
in her celebrity skin, for this project Baker hosts an exclusive
luxury thirtieth birthday party for herself, illustrating the ease with
which one can fabricate and achieve fame. For Baker, the key
is in creating the hype and maintaining the illusion. A suitable
guest list is compiled including London’s hottest young artists and
personalities. A dress is couriered from Dannii Minogue and other
garments and accessories are loaned from prestigious labels. The
party is held at Sketch, Britain’s most famous and expensive eatery.
Baker’s entourage fuss around her—a make-up artist tends to her,
and a photographer is engaged to take paparazzi-style photographs
throughout the night.7
Darren Sylvester Just Death Is True 2006, lightjet print, 90 x 120 cm
Wells’ appearance harks back to an age when women were largely
subservient, encouraged to be repressed models of ‘good etiquette’.
In Wells’ video the camera remains tightly focused on her face,
and nothing much happens. In the tradition of Andy Warhol’s
Screen Tests, she does not speak, and barely moves.5 As the video
progresses, we notice how her facial muscles begin to contract
and twitch, and her eyes dilate. Something is happening but we
don’t know what it is. She attempts to conceal emotion, intent on
poise and visual perfection, but it soon becomes apparent that she
is in pain. Referencing Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (1963) in which he
directs a single shot of a man’s face for 35 minutes, it is the work’s
title that eventually informs the audience of the scenario. Trying to
Be Beautiful While My Hand is Burning (2007) is filmed as Wells
holds her hand steadily over a flame, struggling to conceal its
damaging physical effects which eventually begin to show.
In the tradition of self-mutilation and endurance-based performance
art, Wells records self-inflicted tests of physical and psychological
endurance.6 Exploring the dichotomy between the ‘self’ one aims
to project, and the ‘authentic’ representation that one attempts to
control or conceal, she depicts identity as inherently unstable, a
cultural and personal construct that shifts and mutates.
Identifying a society that craves attention and glamour, Sarah
Baker explores the construction of identity through the imageconscious world of celebrity culture. Blurring the boundary between
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One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
Today, 300 photographs of the event and performance remain,
providing a rich and glittering meditation on consumerism and
contemporary constructions of identity, fame and celebrity. As
Baker’s work exemplifies, celebrity can now be purchased; the right
labels, hairstyle, accessories and a crowd are a testimony to status
and ‘cool’.
Is the key to happiness then consumption? Or are cool-hunting and
the compulsion to consume the consequence of a deeper need? In
The Fourth Sex: Adolescent Extremes, curator and critic Francesco
Bonami explains that adolescents, largely considered impulsive
and unhappy, are identified in consumer markets as ‘a gold mine of
potential consumption’. In states of continuous emotional fluctuation,
with ‘unpredictable desires and needs in constant transformation,
the adolescent becomes the ideal consumer, seeking the response
to his own crisis through identification with different products.’ 8
Darren Sylvester wholeheartedly embraces contemporary youth
culture. He understands the delicate relationship between identity
and identifying with something or someone. He concedes the
role of consumerism in society, reflecting its mass proliferation.
Directed, razor sharp and in hyperreal colour, his images resemble
contemporary advertising—the visual language of the twentyfirst century. Sylvester’s representations of handsome, healthy
adolescents immersed in a rapidly changing world are a record
of fickle devotion. Often depicting technology that soon becomes
dated or superseded, Sylvester reminds viewers that time keeps
moving, and in time, everything is replaceable.
Identity has long been inspired by heroes and idols then shaped
by conscious and sub-conscious mimicry. Sylvester’s You Should
Darren Sylvester Learn To Adjust, Learn To Get Over It 2006, lightjet print, 90 x 120 cm
Let Go Of A Dying Relationship (2006) reincarnates two iconic
music videos so deeply ingrained in our collective memory that
even in his silence viewers can ‘hear’ them. Performing both roles,
Sylvester recreates definitive David Bowie and Kate Bush clips with
remarkable precision, inviting questions pertaining to the roles of
authenticity and the value of reproduction . The two of him—stoic
male and hysterical female—remain forever caught in a cycle,
trapped, unable to communicate and incapable of walking away
from their respective destructive relationships.9
Sylvester’s images, like memories, become frozen moments in
time. Icons become relics; objects and brands become nostalgic
reminders of particular events, triggers of time and place.
Accentuating the role of popular culture in the formation of identity,
Sylvester emphasises the vulnerable, tenuous social constructs and
shifting codes of behaviour that govern adolescent subcultures.
As adolescence increasingly encroaches into early adulthood, this
twenty-first century infantilism serves to prolong the disappointment
and disillusion that it has always inspired.
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
9
Endnotes
1 Shelley Rice, ‘Cross Currents: Models, Migrations and Modernisms’, a paper
presented at VIVID National Photography Festival in Canberra, July 2008
and published in the exhibition catalogue: Role Models: Feminine Identity in
Contemporary American Photography (London: National Museum of Women in the
Arts in association with Scala Publishers Limited, 2008), pp. 22–23. Shelley Rice is
the Associate Arts Professor, Department of Photography and Imaging, Department
of Art History, New York University.
2 For further information about the Up Series see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Up!
3 Quoted from Philip Brophy’s artist statement for Evaporated Music.
4 See Peggy Phelan, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Elizabeth Bronfen, Pipilotti Rist, (London:
Phaidon Press Limited, 2001). For example, in 2000, in the bathroom at Luhring
Augustine Gallery in New York, Rist installed an infrared camera under a glassbottomed toilet, filming the ‘action’ whilst displaying the results to the ‘sitter’ on a
plasma screen, pp. 19, 67.
5 Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests were made from 1964–1966, models were asked to sit
as still as possible while he was filming, and to try not to blink.
6 Australian artist Mike Parr is particularly well known for his self-mutilation and
endurance-based performance art. He has documented a performance in which he
held his index finger over a lit candle until his skin burnt. Mike Parr Light a candle.
Hold your finger in the flame for as long as possible 1972.
Kellie Wells Trying to Be Beautiful While My Hand is Burning 2007, single channel digital video
silent, 4 min 30 sec, dimensions variable (video still)
We devour our idols as if they were consumables, whilst the
diversionary preoccupation with their behaviour simultaneously
impedes the capacity to accurately reflect on our own. Collectively
the artists in One of Us Cannot Be Wrong explore the impact and
pervasiveness of this obsession with celebrity and popular culture
on identity. In a generation fed by the willing and often duplicitous
hand of the media, have celebrities become our Gods? The
declining influence in the West of organised religion has seemingly
made way for a new worship of these glittering celebrity deities,
along with the social and cultural order and hierarchy that they
engender. Does living vicariously through others relieve us of our
boredoms and insecurities; or relieve us of ourselves?
7 This project was achieved with the support of Sketch’s owner, Mourad Mazouz and
two private sponsors.
8 Francesco Bonami ‘The Fourth Sex’, in Francesco Bonami and Raf Simons (eds),
The Fourth Sex: Adolescent Extremes (Milan: Edizioni Charta, 2003), p. 11.
9 Sylvester recreates David Bowie’s Heroes and Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights
music videos replicating costumes, make-up and re-enacting their every move and
expression.
How to Look Amazing in Photographs
Sometimes the world lets me in on its secrets. Not its important
secrets, just its special little ones. The kind of secrets that help
me to uphold a wonderful illusion of cleverness in the eyes of my
friends and family.
For example, I know how to look amazing in photographs.
A little while ago I took a trip on an aeroplane. Sitting next to me on
the aeroplane was a girl with long hair and curled eyelashes. She
was reading a glossy magazine.
“Shhh,” it said.
When I looked down I realised a very scary thing. The sound was
coming from the glossy magazine in my lap. I picked the magazine
up carefully and very slowly put my ears to Scarlett Johansson’s lips.
And this is what I heard:
“Dooooouuuche.”
Just that single word.
“Hi,” I said.
“Did you say ‘douche’?” I whispered in Scarlett’s ear, but the sound
was gone.
“Do you want to read this magazine?” she asked. “I’ve finished
with it.”
I was grateful for her kindness, as it wasn’t the kind of aeroplane
with television screens on the back of every seat and I had made a
bad choice of paperback in the airport newsagency.
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
The girl passed me the magazine.
On the cover was a photograph of Scarlett Johansson. In the
photograph Scarlett looked especially amazing. I looked at her for a
long time without opening the magazine and while I looked at her, I
asked myself a question that I often ask myself when I am looking
at amazing photographs of beautiful ladies: How come you look
that amazing?
Her hair was all everywhere, eyes looking into my eyes, mouth doing
that secret thing that model mouths do. It was amazing.
I couldn’t bring myself to open that magazine; for an hour or more
I just kept looking at the cover. We had hit a little bit of turbulence
and the girl beside me had turned white.
“You’ll be fine,” I said and squeezed her hand. Then I went back to
looking at the cover of the magazine.
Outside the sky was dark and empty. When the turbulence had
settled down the air hostesses came out with wine and lemonade.
And then an eerie thing happened: I heard a sound. Not an
aeroplane sound or the sound of a glass being dropped, but
something like a whisper. It was coming from somewhere very close
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
to me. I looked at the girl beside me. She was asleep. I heard it
again.
“Hey,” she said.
“I get so scared on aeroplanes,” she said.
10
Amanda Maxwell
I drank my glass of wine in one mouthful. I wondered if this was
what it was like to lose your mind.
Douche: a shower in French; not a shower in English.
I thought about an episode of Oprah that I’d seen a few years
earlier. Oprah had been interviewing a gorgeous gynaecologist who
had just written a book on all things lady. The gynaecologist was
smiling and sharing fabulous feminine tips, more of which could be
found in the book if you bought it. Suddenly, Oprah stood up and
said, “You hear that ladies? Don’t douche!”
And the crowd went wild. They joined her in a chorus of “Don’t
douche, don’t douche, don’t douche.” Fists punching the air.
But on the aeroplane that day the memory seemed too good to be
true and I couldn’t guarantee that I hadn’t made it up. Things were
very strange.
The girl next to me was awake now and looked much better.
“Thanks for lending me the magazine,” I said and gave it back to her.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “Great cover isn’t it?”
“It is,” I said. And then I decided to be very bold. “Hey, can I ask you
a question?”
“Shoot,” she said.
I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Well, it’s a bit of a personal
question, but, you see I’m doing some research for a health
magazine and I wondered. Do you, um. Douche?”
She looked at me in a sideways way and didn’t say anything. The
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
11
One Night in Paris
photograph of Scarlett stared out at me from her seat pocket.
“Sorry,” I said. “Let’s pretend I never asked you that.”
“Okay,” she said, still looking at me in that sideways way.
“Okay,” I said. I pulled my eye mask on in a hurry and faked sleep.
This is what it is like to lose your mind, I told myself.
Douche: Shower in French; not a shower in English.
I guess I drifted off for a while then, because the next thing I knew
the girl was tapping me on the shoulder. I pulled off my mask and
looked at her.
“I do,” she said quietly. “I mean, I have. I mean, I do sometimes.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, but only with Diet Coke after we, you know, do it.”
“We?”
“Yeah, dudes.”
“Diet Coke?”
“Yeah, so I don’t get pregnant. It kills sperm.”
In my head I said this to myself: The girl with long hair douches with
Diet Coke after she does it with dudes so she doesn’t get pregnant.
“Thanks for sharing that with me,” I said.
“That’s okay,” she said.
“Will you excuse me?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
In the aeroplane bathroom I splashed cold water on my face and
dried it off with a paper towel. I looked in the mirror and noticed that
I had aeroplane hair. Oh well, I thought. My eyes were bloodshot
too. Never mind. I tried out Scarlett’s pose, a sleepy-eyed pout, but
couldn’t get the lips right. My pucker was more like a dog’s bum.
“Things are very strange,” I mouthed, still watching myself in the
mirror. “I think a glossy magazine just spoke to me, and all it said
was the word ‘douche’”.
And that was IT. That was the epiphany. That was my moment of
clarity. The big break through. Eureka.
12
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
I said it again. “Douche,” and as the word took shape in my mouth
my expression became the expression of a model. I had the perfect
pout. Then it was gone. I tried whispering this time. “Douche.”
Gorgeous. And again. “Douche.” Amazing. Now I had the secret.
Never again would I say cheese for the camera.
When I got back to my seat the girl next to me gave me a
conspiratorial look. She leant over.
“You were gone a long time,” she said. “Were you, um, you know, in
there?”
“Sort of,” I said. And with my new found peace of mind, I let myself
fall into a deep sleep.
When we finally touched down I was the third person off the plane.
I remembered there being a photobooth in the airport terminals
and bypassed the luggage carousel to look for it. When I found it,
I ducked in, whispered the D-word four times for the camera and
found the results to be very pleasing. I looked amazing.
With the strip of pictures in my pocket and a lovely feeling inside
I made my way back to pick up my bags. I didn’t get far though,
before I passed a newsagency and stopped dead. On the rack
before me there were thirty Scarletts midway through saying
‘douche’ for the camera. Sophie Dahl was saying it. JLo was saying
it. Even Gael García Bernal was douching. I felt myself blush and
looked around to see if anyone else was seeing what I was seeing.
There were people all around me, hurrying to and from aeroplanes,
pulling luggage and children along with them. And not one of them
seemed to notice.
And not one of them looked amazing.
Amanda Maxwell is a Sydney-based writer.
First published in WON Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 01, 2007
Justin Clemens
At the 2008 Toronto Film Festival launch of her documentary about
Paris Hilton, titled Paris, not France, director Adria Petty brayed
that the film was about ‘why we watch what we watch, when there
are so many interesting things going on in this world right now.’
Sure thing. Like, a documentary about Paris Hilton is going to
tell me something I didn’t know about contemporary regimes of
spectatorship? In one clip from the documentary that immediately
became part of the news reportage of the event, we were presented
with an intimate shot of Ms Hilton sitting in her car, gigantic
sunglasses covering nearly half her face, reflecting that ‘people see
me as, like, this Barbie with a perfect life, this fantasy.’ No, really. You
must feel all misunderstood and hollow and, like, empty inside.
But Petty and Paris’ statements are perhaps worth more serious
attention than my self-regarding bitterness might suggest. Celebrity
culture isn’t just dumb; it’s reflexively dumb. Hence the necessity
for Petty to claim that there was more to her documentary than
just an amoral attempt to cash-in on a big celebrity. Her cashingin on a big celebrity shows that she’s showing the truth about
cashing-in on a big celebrity precisely through cashing-in on a
big celebrity. Moreover, celebrity culture isn’t just self-analysis. It’s
auto-critique too. However banal her protestations, Paris isn’t wrong
to complain about the fans. It’s as clear to Paris as to any gardenvariety psychoanalyst that her fans are not only deluded but cruel:
‘I’m basically being judged, and they’re creating this false person,
and I can’t do anything about it,’ she says. Celebrity culture isn’t just
exploitative; it’s reflexively exploitative.
The English psychoanalytic critic Jacqueline Rose—a selfproclaimed fan of Hello! magazine—feels much the same way. In
On Not Being Able to Sleep, Rose writes: ‘It is assumed that what
we want from celebrities is perfection: money, beauty, health; no
need that can’t be met on demand, no flaws, not a single hair out of
place, nothing that falters or is weak. Bodies which shine so bright
that they blind you to any fear or hesitation beneath the skin. But
perhaps the pleasure we take in celebrities, the contract we strike
with them is more complex and perverse—crueller—than it might
at first seem. Even if there is also empathy, the audience loves
the undoing of the stars.’1 Rose herself links this ‘undoing’ to a
problematic of shame and humiliation.
This is at least partially the case because the undoing of the stars
is integrally linked to their new ways of doing. For one of the things
that these new celebrities do is everything. It’s not their talent that
Sue Dodd Is it True? (Remix) 2005–2008 single channel digital video, stereo sound
3 min 34 sec, dimensions variable (production still)
gives them celebrity; it’s celebrity that gives them talent. Paris is at
once a model, an actress, a singer, a designer, a TV personality, a
philanthropist, a businesswoman, and so on. Posh Spice is a model,
an actress, a singer, a designer, a TV personality, a philanthropist,
a businesswoman, and so on. Lindsay Lohan is at once a model,
an actress, a singer, a designer, a TV personality, a philanthropist,
a businesswoman, and so on. And so on. In fact, celebrity gives
the only talent that really matters today, the only one that has any
objective measure under the conditions of global techno-capitalism:
selling-power.
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
13
So—let’s be honest—since they’re not really actresses, and they’re
not really singers and they’re not really designers, these celebrities
are constantly teetering on the verge of failure anyway, but the kind
of failure that’s absolutely at one with the values of the market:
Lindsay Lohan is nominated twice for a worst-actress award, and
ends up sharing first and second place with herself, a fact which
leads only to more publicity. Not a peccadillo passes unnoticed,
given celebrities are pursued by innumerable paparazzi, lickspittles,
legal types and other parasites. It’s no wonder celebrities end up on
drugs, or speeding, or drink-driving, or assaulting their pursuers, or
back in county jail for parole violations, or all of the above. Some—
such as Princess Diana—literally end up dead from all the attention.
Britney Spears ends up without her underpants. For her part, Paris
makes a ‘home’ sex-tape with her then-boyfriend Rick Salomon
in—where else?—a hotel-room in Vegas (sadly, not a Hilton Hotel
room). The footage ends up on the net, is given an official release
Sarah Baker The Birthday Party 2007 (detail) 300 type C photographs, dimensions variable
by Salomon under the title One Night in Paris, then, after Salomon
is sued by Paris for doing so, becomes the butt of an enormous
wave of attention from all quarters: ‘Porn Star Party Girl Jail Bird’ as
one South African newspaper headline recently crowed. Paris can
happily parody herself too in a video for the ‘Paris Hilton Presidential
Campaign,’ as she responds to the slighting invocation of her name
in Republican candidate John McCain’s US political advertising:
‘Hey America, I’m Paris Hilton, and I’m a celebrity too. Only I’m not
from the olden days, and I’m not promising change like that other
guy. I’m just hot.’2 Young, rich, hot: ‘liberté, publicité, pornographie!’
has become the unrevolutionary catchcry of celebrity today.
Along with pornography, celebrity culture dominates the new media
(Paris famously has her own custom branded YouTube channel).
When I googled ‘Paris Hilton’ from a Paris apartment—yes, Paris,
France—at about 6.00 pm local time on 11 September 2008,
the search-engine came up with ‘about 12,200 [results] for Paris
Hilton’ that had been posted globally in the previous hour. The
sheer reach, numbers and diversity of personnel, not to mention
the ever-increasing power of interactivity (blogging, for instance),
makes contemporary celebrity culture unprecedentedly intense.
There are probably more images of Paris Hilton in circulation than
any single person could ever see. She subsists across the globe in
conversations, newspapers, magazines, TV, film, websites, blogs,
clothes, mobile ringtones, etc., in all her multiplicity, patency, and
inconsistency. In this universalisation, her image-body become
at once promiscuously polymorphously perverse and absolutely
desexualised, at once eminently available in the artificial spectacular
world, and eviscerated in reality. As Paris herself says, ‘My
boyfriends always tell me I’m not sexual. Sexy, but not sexual.’
But that’s no surprise, for where does ‘Paris’ exist, except as an
unrepresentably complex arabesque of radically delocalised hypertechnologised audio-images barrelling into our brains and bodies
from every transmitting device on the planet? A little bit of Paris is
inside us all, whether we like it or not.
The power of the contemporary celebrity image—this intense
transpersonal environmental sinuosity that snakes into us by
exposing itself exposing itself—also transforms the experience
of time. Paris is forever, even if, in ten years, it’s possible only
the archives will really remember or care all that much about
her…. Celebrities like Paris Hilton are trans-mediatic artificial
paradises whose ontological status is radically volatile. This is,
above all, because of us, its audience. Why do we demand such
shamelessness, such permissiveness, such flagrant forms of
enjoyment from our new celebrities? Why do we have such an
interest in them….even when we may not be very interested
in them?
14
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
I don’t know. Certainly, there’s the covert outsourcing of unacted
and unconfessed personal desires: the stars are acting out our
disgusting fantasies for us, but in such a way that we can enjoy
ourselves through them, and, simultaneously condemn their
unspeakable behaviour in the most self-righteous and moralising
way. As well as giving us useful (if extreme) lifestyle directions,
celebrities remain at once pitiable and contemptible, the objects
of our envy and our disdain. But there’s surely more to our
identifications with them than this.
Contemporary celebrity culture oscillates between shamefulness
and shamelessness, but without, paradoxically, ever touching
on shame itself. Shameless exposure: an emptiness concealing
itself in emptiness. As psychoanalysis has emphasised, a person
without shame is lacking self, or, indeed, only able to disport himor herself shamelessly because it is really not him- or herself that
he or she is exposing. Shame is concerned with the gaze of the
collectivity, with the installation of a sense of honour, which is the
polar correlate of shame. Shame is such a terrible affect in some
societies that it can prove lethal for its sufferers. By contrast, guilt,
and its polar correlate, responsibility, depend—rather than on a
collective, ‘extimate’ gaze—on an internalised, individuated relation
to abstract law and to judgement. Shame, then, has the paradox
of being at once absolutely collective and absolutely you, a real
status in the world: I am (seen to be) shameful. Guilt, by contrast,
paradoxically is you only insofar as you take on the burden of this
external, persecutory principle, which has no necessary real status
in the world: I judge that I am (judged) guilty. Shame emerges at
the moment that you appear as nothing-but-an-object in the others’
eyes, a flush without content, a radically passive detachment that
delivers you an identity it simultaneously condemns. You don’t
need to have done anything wrong, or be the subject of a trial
to be ashamed. Simply appearing as such is shameful. So the
shamelessness of celebrity culture has serious consequences for
the sense of life. As Jacques-Alain Miller puts it, ‘the disappearance
of shame alters the meaning of life. It changes the meaning of
life because it changes the meaning of death.’3 If shame cultures
often run with such formulae as ‘death before dishonour,’ celebrity
culture—to the extent it explicitly deals with it at all—is more akin to
John Falstaff’s shameless fleeing for the sake of his life: ‘What is
honour?’ the fat buffoon asks in William Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV,
‘A word. What is that honour? Air.’ Under these conditions, it’s best
to run for your life, even if life itself no longer has any attestable
value….other than seeing itself being seen to be seen, at any cost.
One upshot of all this is the production of a kind of post-political
community, one in which genuine candidates for the U.S. presidency
find themselves having to denounce the intimate enemy of celebrity
Sarah Baker The Birthday Party 2007 (detail) 300 type C photographs, dimensions variable
in order to try to locate some minimal kind of social leverage
for their own allegedly serious positions. So McCain’s campaign
fixed on it as a tactic against Barack Obama, by trying to align
the latter’s political status with the self-evident vacuity of a Paris
Hilton. Yet, insofar as it integrates self-analysis and auto-critique
into its own perverse presentations, the reflexive vacuity of celebrity
shamelessness may well have the last smirk. If that integrally
involves us, the audience, hiding from our own absence in the
seething phantasms of celebrity, one would have to say that Paris
Hilton’s face is not only our own face—the face of numberless
nobodies—but it is also a face of sinister, hypocritical malevolence
as well, a testimony to our own disavowed scopophilic powers.
Justin Clemens is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Culture and Communication
at University of Melbourne.
Endnotes
1. J. Rose, On Not Being Able to Sleep: Psychoanalysis and the Modern World (London:
Vintage, 2004), p. 4.
2. ‘Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad,’ http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/64ad536a6d
11 September 2008.
3. J.-A. Miller, ‘A note on shame,’ in J. Clemens and R. Grigg (eds), Jacques Lacan and
the Other Side of Psychoanalysis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 19.
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
15
I Want Time to Slow Down
Darren Sylvester
Denver is a four-hour flight away. We had a half hour wait before our
connecting flight, so to pass time in the departure lounge I bought
the Washington Post while you bought The Times. The coffee house
was a chain exactly like the one we were at yesterday in Seattle.
Brochures by our seats pitched sightseeing day trips we could take
if we ventured into the city, yet looking around we really could have
been in any other airport lounge we had waited in throughout our
lives. The design and layout of everything was very familiar. For
example, earlier I walked to the bathroom and realised I didn’t even
look for it, I just knew. When you think about the organisation, the
efficiency, the sameness and sense of security that all this offers,
it’s really impressive. We’re always shifted without fuss from one
thing to the next, always passing through on the way to something
bigger yet non-specific. Something invisible and anonymous,
completely out of our control.
I was thinking about air travel, how we now measure the time
passed, not the distance travelled. A country is only hours away, a
sleep away—a stop over in Hong Kong away. I used to enjoy flying
but now I’m completely removed from the experience. The familiar
coffee chains and signage. The relatives and lovers crying in the
departure lounge. Our bodies hurtling fast and vulnerable, miles
from the rotating planet beneath us, with no concept of the physical
distance and cultures we’ve covered. You interrupted my thoughts
by pointing out a story in your newspaper about how the money in
our savings account was linked to a major financial network, being
used to profit and gain interest for a company neither of us had
heard of.
“We’re all part of this global community, whether we like it or not,”
you said without lifting your head, “It makes me feel more alone than
ever before. It feels nothing like a community”.
This was our conversation, pointing out stories the other may not
have noticed in our respective newspapers. I was tired and in need
of a shower. You slipped on your headphones. I could hear the
music clearly, it was the compilation you had burnt from CDs at
home—Lauren Hill and an old Wu-Tang Clan album. From inside the
aircraft the Earth didn’t seem as large. I look out and can almost
imagine the entire circumference and all the people beneath us.
Some would crash the car on their way to work today. Some would
be in love with co-workers. Some are waiting by the phone.
16
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
Darren Sylvester If You Fall In Love Again, You’re A Little Older, A Little Less Trusting 2006
lightjet print, 90 x 120 cm
As the plane moved, I looked further across the horizon and could
see how the same things would be happening elsewhere, then
happening again, over and over. After a while I realised everything
is pretty much the same. You rested your head on my shoulder. We
watched the sunset begin. Later the plane banked left to begin our
descent and I noticed you sleeping. I turned down the volume on
your mini disc. I wanted time to slow down. To slow down so much
that you and I would form a clear colour photograph and become
trapped here together, over the blue Denver mountains.
First published in the exhibition catalogue Darren Sylvester God Only Knows
What I’d Be Without You, William Mora Galleries, Melbourne, 2000
(Right) Sue Dodd Frozen Sperm 2008 (detail), single channel digital video, stereo sound, 8 min 6 sec, dimensions variable (production still)
(Left and above) Sue Dodd Is it True? (Remix) 2005–2008 (details) single channel digital video, stereo sound 3 min 34 sec, dimensions variable (production stills)
Kate Murphy Britney Love 2000, single channel digital video installation, stereo sound, 7 min, dimensions variable (video stills)
Kate Murphy Britney Love 2007 (details), single channel digital video installation, stereo sound, 9 min, dimensions variable (video stills)
Sarah Baker The Birthday Party 2007 (details) 300 type C photographs, dimensions variable
Sarah Baker The Birthday Party 2007 (details) 300 type C photographs, dimensions variable
(Left and above) Philip Brophy Evaporated Music 2: At the Mouth of Metal 2006–2008 (b) Lap Dance Choking Whore (details) single channel digital video with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, 2 min, dimensions variable (video stills)
(Above and right) Philip Brophy Evaporated Music 2: At the Mouth of Metal 2006–2008 (a) My Song Growls Wasted Air (details) single channel digital video with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, 3 min, dimensions variable (video stills)
Kellie Wells Trying to Be Beautiful While My Hand is Burning 2007, single channel digital video, silent, 4 min 30 sec, dimensions variable (video stills)
Pipilotti Rist Open My Glade (Flatten) 2000, single channel digital video installation, silent, 9 min 52 sec, dimensions variable (video stills)
Pipilotti Rist Open My Glade (Flatten) 2000, single channel digital video installation, silent, 9 min 52 sec, dimensions variable (video stills)
(Left) Darren Sylvester The Object Of Social Acceptance Is To Forfeit Individual Dreams 2003, lightjet print, 120 x 120 cm
(Above) Darren Sylvester Doomed 2008, lightjet prints, 90 x 120 cm (each) (diptych)
List of Works
Sarah Baker
The Birthday Party 2007
300 type C photographs, dimensions variable
Photography: Jet
Courtesy the artist
Philip Brophy
Evaporated Music 2: At the Mouth of Metal 2006–2008
(a) My Song Growls Wasted Air
(b) Lap Dance Choking Whore
single channel digital video with Dolby Digital 5.1 audio
5 min, dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne & Sydney
Pipilotti Rist
Open My Glade (Flatten) 2000
single channel digital video installation, silent
9 min 52 sec, dimensions variable
Camera: Filip Zumbrunn; co-editing: Mich Hertig; production management:
Cornelia Providoli; production assistance: Arthur Miranda; graphic design: Thomas
Rhyner; directing, editing, cast: Pipilotti Rist.
Commissioned by Public Art Fund, New York for the Astrovision Screen at Times
Square NYC
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Zürich London
Darren Sylvester
Doomed 2008
lightjet prints, 90 x 120 cm (each) (diptych)
Sue Dodd
Frozen Sperm 2008
single channel digital video, stereo sound
8 min 6 sec, dimensions variable
Sound production: Phil Dodd
If You Fall In Love Again, You’re A Little Older, A Little Less Trusting 2006
lightjet print, 90 x 120 cm
Is it True? (Remix) 2005–2008
single channel digital video, stereo sound
3 min 34 sec, dimensions variable
Sound production: Phil Dodd
Learn To Adjust, Learn To Get Over It 2006
lightjet print, 90 x 120 cm
All works courtesy the artist
Kate Murphy
Britney Love 2000
single channel digital video installation, stereo sound
7 min, dimensions variable
Britney Love 2007
single channel digital video installation, stereo sound
9 min, dimensions variable
All works courtesy the artist
Just Death Is True 2006
lightjet print, 90 x 120 cm
Courtesy Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney
The Object Of Social Acceptance Is To Forfeit Individual Dreams 2003
lightjet print, 120 x 120 cm
You Should Let Go Of A Dying Relationship 2006
single channel digital video, silent
3 min 31 sec, dimensions variable
All works courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney; William Mora
Galleries, Melbourne; and Johnston Gallery, Perth unless otherwise stated.
Kellie Wells
Trying to Be Beautiful While My Hand is Burning 2007
single channel digital video, silent
4 min 30 sec, dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist
Darren Sylvester You Should Let Go Of A Dying Relationship 2006, single channel digital video, silent, 3 min 31sec, dimensions variable (video stills)
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
41
Artist Biographies
Sarah Baker is an American-born artist who currently lives and works in London.
She completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at San Francisco Art Institute, and a
Master of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London. Baker has received several
commissions and a number of awards, including an Arts Council England Individual
Grant for A Portrait of Bill May. In 2007 she was a guest speaker at Serpentine
Gallery in London. Baker has held solo exhibitions in Italy, Spain, Belgium and
the UK, and her work has been widely exhibited in group exhibitions throughout
Europe and America. In 2008, Bearspace in London presented a solo show of her
video installation Studs.
Philip Brophy lives and works in Melbourne. Since forming the notable
experimental music group
(referred to as ‘tsk tsk tsk’) in 1976, Brophy
has enjoyed a prolific and acclaimed career working as a musician, composer,
sound designer, filmmaker, writer, artist, curator, educator and academic. More
recently he has produced a range of audiovisual works focused on pop, sex and
music that have been exhibited extensively in Australia and Japan at venues
including Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Australian Centre for the Moving
Image and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne; Art Gallery of New South Wales,
Sydney; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; National Museum of Art, Osaka; and
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. He is widely published nationally and internationally,
specialising in three main interest areas: audiovisual media and technology;
comics, graphics and associated mass-media; and pop art in its historical and
contemporary forms. He curated the major retrospective Tezuka—The Marvel of
Manga in 2006 for the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne that subsequently
toured to major museums nationally and internationally. His work is held in a
number of public and private collections. Philip Brophy is represented by Anna
Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney.
Sue Dodd lives and works in Melbourne. In 2000, she completed a Master of
Fine Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) where she is
currently a PhD candidate. Working across disciplines and using various media
including installation, performance and video, Dodd produces works that offer
an acutely post-modern reflection on contemporary life. Combining pop and
celebrity culture, as Gossippop, she collaborates with her brother, Phil Dodd. She
has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally at a wide range of
venues including National Gallery of Victoria, Monash University Museum of Art
and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne; and Canberra Contemporary
Art Space. She participated in the Adelaide International Festival in 2006 and
in 2007 she travelled to Singapore to perform West Space East for the Asialink
project Run Artist Run. In 2008 she collaborated with writer Enza Gandolfo
to produce the book and exhibition Inventory: On Op Shops, supported by
Arts Victoria.
Kate Murphy lives and works in Sydney. She completed a Bachelor of Arts, First
Class Honours/University Medal at the Canberra School of Art, Australian National
University in 1999 and a Master of Fine Art at the College of Fine Arts, University
of New South Wales, in 2005. She has participated in group exhibitions nationally
and internationally and presented solo exhibitions in Australia and Ireland. Murphy
was the recipient of the 2004 Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship and
she has received numerous grants and awards and undertaken residencies in
42
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
­Curator Acknowledgements
Canberra, Dublin and New York. Murphy’s work is held in both public and private
collections, including Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Australian Centre
for the Moving Image, Melbourne.
Pipilotti Rist lives and works in Zürich and is one of the most highly regarded
contemporary artists working in video-based practice today. She studied graphic
design and photography at the Institute of Applied Arts in Vienna and then video
at the Basel School of Design. From 1988—1994 she performed and recorded
with the group Les Reines Prochaines. In 1997, Rist was awarded the prestigious
Premio 2000 at the Venice Biennale for Ever Is Over All (1997), in 2000 the New
York Public Art Fund commissioned Open My Glade (Flatten) (2000), and from
2002–2003 she was invited to teach as a visiting professor at the University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Rist has staged solo exhibitions at many
prestigious museums and galleries world-wide including Museum of Modern Art
(MoMA), New York; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Centre Pompidou,
Paris; Museo Nacional de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Centraal Museum, Utrecht;
Museum of Fine Arts, Montréal; and Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw. In
addition, her work has featured in a number of Biennales, including the Sydney
Biennale in 2000 and the 2005 Venice Biennale, 51st International Art Exhibition,
Contribution of Swiss Federal Office of Culture BAK, where her work was
mounted at the Baroque Church of San Stae on the Canale Grande. Her works are
held by many important art collections worldwide. Pipilotti Rist is represented by
Hauser & Wirth Zürich London and Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York.
It has been a delightful and rewarding experience to
bring together the work of these artists for exhibition
at Centre for Contemporary Photography. For their
commitment to the project and insightful work, I
thank Sarah Baker, Philip Brophy, Sue Dodd, Kate
Murphy, Pipilotti Rist, Darren Sylvester and Kellie
Wells. This catalogue has been achieved through
the generous support of Copyright Agency Limited
(CAL): Cultural Fund to whom I am sincerely grateful.
I am indebted also to sponsors who have assisted me
to realise this project; I thank Scanlan & Theodore,
Roy, Crumpler and Kodak Professional. I extend
my thanks to organisations who have generously
loaned technology and equipment for the exhibition:
Monash University Museum of Art, Move-in and The
Ian Potter Museum of Art, as well as ongoing in-kind
supporters Sofitel and Tint Design. Thank you also to
colleagues Naomi Cass, Rebecca Chew, Tony Dutton,
Francisco Fisher, Shay Minster, Michael Nichols,
Liesl Pfeffer and the hardworking team of dedicated
CCP volunteers for their assistance and support;
contributors Justin Clemens, Amanda Maxwell and
Darren Sylvester for their wonderful words; Danny
Jacobsen for his handsome design; Ulanda Blair for
her time and ideas; Adam Green for his unwavering
and generous assistance; Leonard Cohen for the
exhibition title; Natasha Bullock, Alexie Glass,
Kirrily Hammond and Scott Miles.
Catalogue Sponsor
Exhibition Sponsors
Darren Sylvester lives and works in Melbourne. He completed a Bachelor of
Fine Art Photography and Graphic Design at Charles Sturt University, New South
Wales and is currently undertaking a Master of Fine Art at Monash University,
Melbourne. Sylvester’s practice encompasses photography, video and sculpture.
He has received a number of awards and grants including an Australia Council
residency in New York in 2004. He has had solo exhibitions throughout Australia,
and his work has been widely exhibited in group exhibitions both nationally and
overseas. In 2008, the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney presented a
survey of his work. Many important private and public collections nationally and
internationally have acquired his work, including National Gallery of Australia,
Canberra; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Art Gallery of New South Wales,
Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth and the collection of Sir Elton John.
Darren Sylvester is represented by Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney, William
Mora Galleries, Melbourne and Johnston Gallery, Perth.
Kellie Wells lives and works in Melbourne. In 2007 she graduated from the
Victorian College of the Arts (VCA), University of Melbourne. Since 2006, she
has exhibited at a number of exhibition spaces including West Space and the
VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery in Melbourne and Spectrum Gallery in Perth. In
2008 she exhibited in a group exhibition at Apexart in New York and her video
work, Embellir (2007) is currently touring nationally and throughout Asia as part
of the exhibition Move on Asia. Wells participated in the 2008 Next Wave Festival
in Melbourne and also exhibited in Hatched08 at Perth Institute of Contemporary
Arts (PICA). She has won several prizes and awards and her work has been
acquired by a number of private and public collections, including the Museum of
Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania.
Centre for Contemporary Photography is supported by the
Victorian Government through Arts Victoria and is assisted by
the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts
funding and advisory body. Centre for Contemporary Photography
is supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of
the Australian, state and territory governments. CCP is a member
of CAOs, Contemporary Arts Organisations of Australia.
One of Us Cannot Be Wrong
43
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One of Us Cannot Be Wrong