after this, i am still no one.: June 2009

Monday, June 22, 2009

Greatest Hits - 'Tacohat' Collaboration Exhibition...

West Space Gallery, Melbourne

Went along with a mate on the weekend to have a look at a group show at Westspace.
There were a few artists being exhibited but i was there to see a collaboration of visual artists who call themselves 'Greatest Hits'. They create video and installation pieces which are pretty wild.

I was lucky enough to be introduced to one member of GH, Simon. He was a cool dude who told me a bit out about how they produce their work and why.

'There is no escape from the hours and the days. Neither from tomorrow nor from yesterday because yesterday has deformed us, or been deformed by us... Yesterday is not a milestone that has been passed, but a daystone on the beaten track of the years, and irremediably part of us, within us heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday.'

Some video pieces they have uploaded online...

http://www.westspace.org.au/

Bill Viola 'Ocean Without A Shore' Exhibition...

Ground level, NGV St Kilda

Had a look at the Bill Viola video installation.
Really blew me away.
I loved the concept and the way it was presented.

"
Bill Viola’s Ocean without a shore, which takes its title from the Andalucian Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi (1165–1240), explores the threshold between life and death, or as the artist has stated, ‘the presence of the dead in our lives’. The installation is emblematic of Viola’s considered attention to human beings undergoing various states of transformation and renewal. In the installation, three video screens become surfaces for the manifestation of images of the dead attempting to re-enter our world. The physical threshold through which the figures pass is not a digital effect, but actually a ‘sheet’ of cascading water.

Ocean without a shore was originally installed in a 15th century chapel for the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007 and directly incorporated the church’s internal architecture by using three existing stone alters as recesses for video screens. For the installation at NGV, the chapel is evoked conceptually through the creation of an intimate space built within an exhibition gallery."