Curated program of contemporary video art

Curated program of contemporary video art
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Introducing the Kick Off contemporary video
art program.
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Kick Off is a curated program of contemporary video art created specifically for
the new Metricon Stadium, home of the Gold Coast SUNS.
This project has provided a rare opportunity to create a public art program that
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seeks to explore the boundaries between art and sport. The stadium’s enormous high
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definition LED scoreboard sparked the idea of creating a program of video art that would
inspire, challenge and excite both sports fans and lovers of contemporary art alike.
By operating at the intersection of art and sport, the Kick Off program aims to bring
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contemporary art to a broad new audience at a scale seldom seen in Australia.
Kick Off has been made possible with the invaluable support from Stadiums
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Queensland, The Gold Coast SUNS, The Gold Coast City Council, Watpac, Populous,
Creative Sight and the Queensland Government.
Angeline Smith, Public Art Project Manager, Project Services, Department of Public Works,
Queensland Government.
Resonating with our human experiences and principles, sport drives our
perceptions in ways that also apply to contemporary art practice.
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Ten video art pieces were selected and commissioned from
Mata Dupont, Alex Chomicz and Paul Mumme have all made various
an array of emerging and established Australian artists for the
observations of the cult of the Australian sporting hero. The subtle
inaugural Kick Off program. This unique collection of curated works
humour derived from Christopher Howlett and Laith McGregor’s
includes artists that are recognised at a national and international
works are different perspectives to art and sport in a high impact
level for their contribution to culture including Vernon Ah Kee,
arena, whilst Grant Stevens has created a poetic, emotionally charged
Julie Rrap, Grant Stevens, Christopher Howlett, Tarryn Gill and
commentary of ‘the game’.
Pilar Mata Dupont, Alex Chomicz, Laresa Kosloff, Paul Mumme,
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The works vary in disposition; from those that are light,
Gabriella and Silvana Mangano and Laith McGregor. These
humorous (and sometimes kitsch) contrasted with other more
talented artists work across disciplines within their practice in
abstract interpretations of strategy, the game, movement, winners and
film, performance, choreography, photography, drawing, sound,
losers and nationhood. A number of the video art pieces specifically
animation, new media and installation. Artists Gabriella and
reference the Gold Coast as well the Gold Coast SUNS, whilst others
Silvana Mangano and Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont were
tend to explore the broader themes and ideas of play, the individual
specifically selected for their collaborative practice.
and the audience. The inaugural Kick Off program offers viewers a
The video artworks selected are diverse in tempo from Vernon
Ah Kee’s powerful reclaiming of Surfers Paradise Beach; an upbeat
hand-drawn dance animation by Laresa Kosloff to subtle real time
interpretations of the movement of the game and the spectacle by
Julie Rrap and Gabriella and Silvana Mangano. Tarryn Gill and Pilar
broad range of unique and highly engaging works to be experienced
and enjoyed on the stadium’s big screen.
Renai Grace, Curator, Creative Director of Creative Sight.
CantChant (sequence one)
Ah Kee was born in 1967 in Innisfail, North Queensland.
The Beach encompasses a specific mindset in the Australian
His people are the Kuku Yalandji, Koko Berrin, Waanji, Yidindji and
psyche. It is the ideal and the idealism in what the Beach means to
Guugu Yimithirr peoples of North Queensland. He lives and works in
the rhythms of everyday life for the people of this land that must be
Brisbane. His work explores the Aboriginal and the non-Indigenous
considered in every encounter with Beach, or indeed the Coast. It
position and context in contemporary Australian society. Using
seems everyone, be it near as the foreshore or as far off as the central
text, video and drawing, Ah Kee references past and present racial
deserts, is informed and shaped by their proximity to the Coast.
atrocities and the resonance they have in the present. “The art we
What is clear in Australia is that the Beach not only possesses
make is Aboriginal art ... because the way we live our lives is an
white sands, but it possesses White people. And it is White people,
Aboriginal experience.” Ah Kee’s work is motivated by his profound
who in turn, would seek to possess it. While it is Aboriginal people who
sense of exclusion and invisibility as an Aboriginal Australian. While
truly embody the Beach, along with the whole of the ‘Australian’ land
his work is cast as a clear statement of Aboriginal sovereignty, on
mass, it is White people in Australia who have established the Beach,
closer inspection it is its ambiguities that take the discussion to
particularly the East Coast, as a bastion of power and privilege; a
the next level. Ah Kee is represented by Milani Gallery, Brisbane,
territorial preserve for the White Australian ideal.
Australia. www.milanigallery.com.au
The Surfboard and Surfing lifestyle have become synonymous
with the Beach and Beach Culture in Australia. In CantChant,
the shield boards and their association with Aboriginal men,
encompassed in the surfboards and in the video, are an exercise in
reiteration; of identity, and of social and political positioning. Equally
clear, is the all too real sense that the Black men, despite their
colourful beach-branded apparel and flashy boards, do not fit.
Vernon Ah Kee (detail) still from CantChant (sequence one).
Image courtesy the artist.
Rising Suns
Chomicz has been awarded the ‘Tomorrow’s Cinema’ Prize at the
The image of a golden sun rising relentlessly out of the water, day
Festival International du Film Indépendant in Brussels for his 12 min
after day, became an irresistible symbol for the idea of an unstoppable
film Half Mongrel. Previous work attracted awards from the Australian
team of players rising up mystically into the sky.
Writer’s Guild; ACS; ATOM; as well as a recent Critic’s Choice Prize
at The Brisbane International Film Festival. The Laundry was invited
to the student showcase at the Cannes Film Festival. Following an
internship in Warsaw with Academy Award winning director Andrzej
Wajda, he was commissioned to make recruitment films for the
Singapore Army. Recently he has been exhibiting Video Art as well
as a Photographic Series which was shown as part of The Weekend
Australian’s emerging art project Off The Wall @ Art Sydney & Art
Brisbane. www.alexchomicz.com
Alex Chomicz (detail) still from Rising Suns.
Image courtesy the artist.
Shooting at 1200 frames per second revealed a kind of magic in
something that is very normal and everyday.
The endless inevitable sunrise.
Red & Yellow Composition
Howlett graduated with a MFA from the Californian Institute of
Red & Yellow Composition is a whimsical, child-like fairytale
the Arts in 2000 and previously graduated with First Class
narrative between two AFL match balls who develop a friendship
Honours in a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Queensland University of
as they hop, bounce and roll their way through the Gold Coast
Technology in 1996. His works have been exhibited internationally
fantasy theme parks, simulated nature exhibits and idyllic beach
in festivals including the Inter-Society of Electronic Arts in Helsinki,
surroundings. Flying though the air, they eventually discover their
Finland and Stockholm; Videoholica International Video Art Festival
new home which just so happens to be the new Metricon Stadium,
in Bulgaria; Los Angeles Freewaves Festival of Film, Video and
homeground of the Gold Coast SUNS. Happiness and joy abounds as
New Media and exhibited work at the Art Center College of Design
they hop, jump and skip around the architecture of their new adopted
in Pasadena, California. His solo and collaborative works have
playground – like two butterflies fluttering from leaf to leaf, searching
also been exhibited locally at the Gallery of Modern Art, Institute of
for flowers. Through the use of open ended sign systems my art
Modern Art, the QUT Art Museum, the Arc Biennial for Art & Design
practice manipulates virtual and real environments to shift cultural and
and interstate at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia,
political understandings of our physical and psychological selves.
Hobart Art Gallery, Cairns Contemporary Art Space and Blindside
My conceptual art projects often result in long term performances,
Artist Run Space in Melbourne. In 2010 he founded the Queensland
video art computer game design, hardware modifications, 3D
Centre for Contemporary Art and is currently lecturing in Sculpture
animations, sound and sculptural works, site-specific installations,
at the Queensland College of Art. He is currently based in Brisbane,
painting, and machinima films. These diverse, artistic universes
Queensland. www.chrishowlett.com.au
expand preconceived notions of narrative and documentary by using
humour, autobiography, pop music, fiction and fantasy to explore
how technology redefines and influences our subjectivity through its
pervasive use.
Chris Howlett (detail) still from Red & Yellow Composition.
Image courtesy the artist.
Feeling for You
Kosloff lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. Her work
This hand-drawn animation is an imaginary self-portrait, in which
incorporates a range of approaches to making including Super 8
Kosloff executes a complex dance routine involving break-dance
film, choreographed video works, hand drawn animation, installation,
moves. Feeling for You explores the imaginative possibilities
drawing and performance. Recent artworks explore the figure in
of drawing in relation to the temporal and spatial limitations of
relation to form; slapstick meets high-end abstraction. Kosloff is
two-dimensionality.
interested in how movement, gesture and abstraction translate into
The theme of fantasy in relation to the human body is prevalent in
significance. Central interests include the body in relation to systems
Kosloff’s animations. Feeling for You (a self portrait) uses stop-frame
aspiring to purity, including abstraction, geometry, architecture,
animation and pop culture sound to create short narratives about the
sport and the trained body. Kosloff uses humour and the absurd
fantasy of dancing the way you want to. Influenced by music video
to manipulate and expose mythologies of autonomy, for example,
clips, Kosloff has constructed a false reality in which animations
central to her choreographed video works is an interest in the subtle
are able to physically achieve the unachievable, in humorous, jerky
and ongoing influence of aspects of modernism, imbedded in our
compressed time movements. Her animations have influenced the
relationship to formal, cultural and historical narratives.
choreography of the movements by carrying the formal concerns of
www.laresakosloff.com
drawing through to dance practice; Kosloff links the improvisations
and gestures that underpin both drawing and dance by emphasising
the way both disciplines rely on movement of the body through space
with the principal difference being that in drawing, unlike dance, marks
remain behind as an after-trace.
Laresa Kosloff (detail) still from Feeling for You.
Image courtesy the artist.
Untitled 2011
Born Stanthorpe, Queensland, the performance and video art
This performance video explores the performative element of
of Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano challenges conceptual
sport not only from the players and audience perspective, but also
drawing practice using body gesture to draw in space. During 2010,
the medias take on these events. The TV coverage that surrounds
Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano works were included in the
sporting events, in particular their use of repeated replay of great
2010 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of South
sporting moments, is an area that has been explored in this work.
Australia and Love, Loss and Intimacy, an NGV group exhibition.
We are interested in the movements that are slowed down, frozen,
Gabriella Mangano completed a BFA (Drawing) at the Victorian
replayed and repeated for several seconds for audience enjoyment.
College of the Arts in 2001 and Silvana Mangano a BFA (Drawing)
This work conveys the universal idea of the emotive states that one
at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2003. Gabriella Mangano and
experiences when viewing sport.
Silvana Mangano were awarded an Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant and
We used the editing process as an essential element of the work.
the Can Serrat International Arts Residency in 2007. They were also
Untitled is made with the use of two separate frames. Both frames
recipients of a New Work Emerging Grant from the Australia Council
have one body moving differently within the frame. The two frames
for the Arts in 2006. Their work was exhibited at the Art Gallery of NSW
are then cropped individually in half. The cropped frames are then
as part of the prestigious 2009 Anne Landa Award. Gabriella Mangano
joined together to create one whole frame again. Thus the end result
and Silvana Mangano are represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery in
is an image of one body moving, yet there is awareness that there is
Victoria. www.annaschwartzgallery.com
something slightly awkward in the movements. It is split, disjointed;
connected, disconnected. The body represents part player, part
audience member. It also represents teams playing with and against
each other. Filming in black and white was a deliberate decision to
emphasize movement. The black and white montage of abstract
shapes echo the actions of the body to accentuate the occupied
Gabriella Mangano & Silvana Mangano (detail) still from Untitled 2011.
Image courtesy the artists.
space that is created with each movement.
Nelson R. Mandela
Ball Game
McGregor’s practice draws on illusionary material to convey a
In Ball Game a link is made between sport, art and the body.
sense of the uncanny in his work. The figures that he represents
McGregor has created a moving ‘living sculpture’. When the spectator
are derived from both factual and fictitious realms including hero
views the work they are left with a feeling of uneasiness as they watch
worship and personal family stories. The qualities that result from
with the anticipation that the sculpture may fail at any moment. In the
McGregor’s practice highlight the grey areas that exist between
work the protagonist is asked to carry out the simple task of bringing
fiction and non-fiction.
the basketball from the ground to their head without using their hands.
McGregor has exhibited widely throughout Australia most
Before our eyes we watch a comical dance unfold. Like other sports,
recently in New Psychedelia, The University of Queensland Art
there are rules and regulations the punter has to abide by while also
Museum (2011) and Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing, Heide
maintaining a high level of concentration and determination that is
Museum of Art, Melbourne (2010). He won the 2009 Qantas Art Prize
evident in all sporting codes. This ‘living sculpture’ takes on its own life
and has been a finalist for numerous other prizes including: Rick
as it begins to form absurd renditions of human dexterity.
Amor Drawing Prize (2010), Wilson HTM National Art Prize (2009)
and Royal Bank of Scotland Emerging Artist Award (2009). In 2009
he received a New Work Grant and carried out a residency at the
Centre Intermondes in La Rochelle, France. McGregor is represented
by Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney. www.ssfa.com.au
Laith McGregor (detail) still from Ball Game.
Image courtesy the artist.
Play Hard
Brisbane born multidisciplinary artist Paul Mumme began
This new media artwork takes the form of a single channel
painting at age 10. After leaving school he travelled Europe for
slapstick video montage showing the protagonist training, warming
some time, before enrolling in Fine Art at Queensland College of Art
up and preparing for a game of football. Referencing recent comedies
which he graduated from with First Class Honours. In 2006 Mumme
and also the classic sports training montage, the protagonist’s acts
was the recipient of the Churchie Emerging Art Award and his work
highlight not only the risks and absurdities involved in AFL game play,
was included in the IMA’s annual Freshcut exhibition, as well as a
but also the endurance and skill required to participate. There exists
Queensland video art survey in the IMA screening room. Since then,
in sport an inherent absurd futility; it is a purposeless exercise for the
Mumme has exhibited in a variety of group shows and solo exhibitions
sake of leisure. But while it serves no tangible function it does, almost
both in Queensland and interstate and has being included in a major
instinctually, mimic a more original hunter-gatherer preoccupation. It is
video art survey at QUT Kelvin Grove – Figuratively Speaking, the ARC
dangerous, and runs against our instinctual reflex for self-preservation
Biennial Exhibition To be confirmed and in 2010 Mumme’s work was
– evidenced by the myriad of protective clothes and precautionary
included in the Australian Centre for Photography group exhibition
strapping – further adding to the ridiculousness of the exercise.
Dream Home.
Mumme’s work deals with paradox, futility, irony and the absurd
Why suffer for the sake of enjoyment? It’s an undeniable human
tendency. We have come full circle, pitting logic against function in
in human behaviour, operating within various manifestations of object-
the name of play. Play (through sport) has come to represent its exact
based tragi-comic slapstick. Usually performative, it stresses the
opposite – passion. Passion by definition is pain; so are we here
presence of a protagonist – sometimes present as a suit-clad figure.
turning play, recreation and fun into suffering? What could be more
www.paulmumme.com
intrinsically human?
The slapstick nature of the work is not only a continuation of a
preoccupation of mine but also complements the contradictory nature
of the paradoxes surrounding sport, risk and play. Paul Mumme (detail) still from Play Hard.
Image courtesy the artist.
Spin
Stevens is an Australian artist currently based in Brisbane.
Stevens often animates texts, images and sounds to explore
He has held numerous solo shows in Australia, as well as in Italy,
various cultural ‘languages’. At the foundation of his practice is a
New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. His work
drive to reconsider how we understand, construct and communicate
has been exhibited in many group-shows including at the Art Gallery
our experiences. By moving between and across the personal,
of New South Wales, the Queensland Art Gallery, the National
shared, virtual, actual and symbolic, his works question how various
Gallery of Victoria and the Singapore Art Museum. Grant received
verbal and non-verbal languages shape our daily lives, subjectivities
his PhD in Fine Art from the Queensland University of Technology,
and communications.
Brisbane, in 2007. He is represented by Gallery Barry Keldoulis in
Sydney. www.gbk.com.au
Spin borrows idioms and metaphors from sports commentary
and squeezes them into a single emotional rollercoaster.
Accompanied by a driving soundtrack, text appears and disappears
one word at a time. As the work progresses, multiple words fade in
and out at the same time, filling the screen and testing our ability to
read and assimilate these well-worn phrases.
On the one hand, the work mimes some of what we enjoy about
sport – its ability to take us to another place, to incite passion and
emotion, and to enable us to share in common experiences, goals
and desires. On the other hand, it plays up the hyperbolic language
often associated with sports broadcasting. The very language that
helps take us to another place, incite passion and make us feel part of
something bigger than ourselves, is pushed to its extreme and starts
to burst at the seams.
Grant Stevens (detail) still from Spin.
Image courtesy the artist.
OuterSpace
Rrap has been one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists for
OuterSpace represents photographic images in which the
the last three decades. Her work has sought to disclose and unravel
body (the artist’s body) appears in a state of suspension. There is
the ways in which the human body has been defined throughout
a narrative of otherness in which the body occupies space but not
western history and culture. She does so with a seductive wit, an
place; the body in outer space is alien and unanchored from earth’s
outward display of pleasure, and a determination to match the gaze
gravitational pull suggesting a body that is ‘out of place’. Equally ‘out-
of her audiences. Deeply based in the story of the body, Rrap’s
of-space’ suggests an opposite; a claustrophobic tightening of space.
art is always a surprise, resulting from an individual ingenuity. In
In the processes of making this work Rrap wanted to create a
the work OuterSpace, the body appears in a state of suspension,
territory in which the performing body could displace the shape of the
castaway and adrift. Rrap is represented by Arc One Gallery in
constructed space. Rrap decided to work with a variety of black elastic
Victoria www.arcone.com.au and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery in New
strips because this material was malleable. The 3D construction in the
South Wales www.roslynoxley9.com.au
studio environment translated into 2D images which suggested black
line drawings within abstract tonal surfaces that created an ambiguous
space for the body to inhabit.
These images were further fractured within the animated space
of the video where space shatters yet constantly re-forms. Here the
female figure becomes a trickster troubling the neutrality of abstraction
by suggesting that no space of art can escape the essential
uncertainty of existence. Crawling, falling, climbing, flying; the body
makes mutable those spaces of art history fixed in time.
Julie Rrap (detail) still from OuterSpace.
Image courtesy the artist.
Gymnasium
In Gymnasium we have portrayed 20 fresh-faced athletes
‘performing’ various indoor gymnastic-like routines. Their movements
Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont were both born in Perth in
are rhythmical and repetitive, like clockwork, made with the poise and
1981. They are multidisciplinary artists, producers and performers with
perfection of an ancient statue of Diana. As they move in the space they
backgrounds in dance and music theatre. Since 2001 they have worked
seem connected as a team, smiling with pride, working together. The
together on a practice that encompasses photography, performance,
joyous expressions the performers exude are akin to Ziegfeld’s girls in
choreography, film, installation and design. Gill and Mata Dupont’s staged
his 1920’s follies.
investigations into nationhood interweave references to Hollywood glamour,
burlesque, Australiana kitsch and social realism.
Recent exhibitions include: remix: wa contemporary art Art Gallery of
The work does adopt the theatrical style of a Hollywood musical
review, but at the same time closely references the aesthetics of the
film work of Leni Riefenstahl. We looked to the Nazi soldiers in her
Western Australia (2011); The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a
propaganda film, Triumph of the Will (1935), and her perfectly honed
Precarious Age, Biennale of Sydney (2010); The Basil Sellers Art Prize, Ian
athletes in Olympia (1938). The style and the camera techniques used in
Potter Museum of Art (2010), Contemporary Australia: Optimism, Gallery
these films, ground breaking at the time they were made, are dramatic
of Modern Art, Brisbane (2008); Primavera, Museum of Contemporary Art,
and theatrical. “Fascism is theatre,” said Jean Genet.
Sydney (2008); and Linden1968, Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts,
We find it to be a useful tool that the complex and alluring visual
Melbourne (2008). They are currently working on a major solo exhibition
effects used in this kind of propaganda film strongly suggest a sinister
of their work, due to open at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in
subtext. With Gymnasium, we investigate how the same qualities that
September 2011. Tarryn Gill and Pilar Mata Dupont are represented by
are valued in sport – camaraderie, mental focus and bodily control,
Goddard de Fiddes, Perth. www.tarrynandpilar.com
submissive behaviour and endurance of pain – are all also valued in
militarised societies. We link the sportsfield to the battlefield as a location
for the demonstration of legitimate patriotic aggression, and success in
both as a source of national pride.
Tarryn Gill & Pilar Mata Dupont (detail) still from Gymnasium.
Image courtesy the artists.
Ideas of the fascist aesthetic, it’s use in propaganda and the cult of
By presenting these replica Australian sports heroes using a
the heroic sportsperson in Australia permeate our single channel video
tongue-in-cheek, fascist-styled aesthetic, this nationalistic aggression is
work, Gymnasium. implied and transposed onto Australian culture.
This project has received financial assistance from the Queensland Government
through art+place Queensland Public Art Fund.
Curated program of contemporary video art