Anxious Bodies

3 June - 2 July 2006

Annie Wilson, Briele Hansen, Matthew Perkins, Sue Dodd & Phil Dodd, Alex Martinis-Roe/Amy Miller, Granular Synthesis (Germany), Bruce Nauman (USA), Vito Acconci (USA), Gilbert & George (UK) Dennis Oppenheim (USA), Geoffrey Hendricks (USA). Curated by Matthew Perkins

Opens 6-8pm Friday 2 June 2006

Anxious Bodies is a collection of performance/videos that use the body as the medium to express concern about the human condition. The works can all be described as evoking a certain degree of disjuncture; a level of anxiety that manifests itself in the body.

The exhibition pays homage to early performance art and provides the viewer with a platform from which to consider these seminal works alongside Australian artists working in performance/video today.

In the 60s - 70s the video camera became a collaborator in the performances of several international artists whose use of the lens became a way of making public the personal and intimate. The artists featured in this exhibition follow, in part, this lineage of the studio-based performance and fabricate their actions for the lens with a kind of cinematic disposition.

The process of cinema and video has become a critical component of the works creation. We begin to see this development especially in the 1970s works of Bruce Nauman, Vito Acconci, Dennis Oppenheim and the mid 1990s work by Granular Synthesis.

The Australian artists featured in this exhibition continue in a similar vein. The central concerns in Annie Wilson's In Your Own Time are endurance, movement and memory. "Each video motion records a measurement of time, and each body represented is a trace of time mediated through the viewer's kinaesthetic memory".

In a humorous take on Victorian dioramas The Drawing Room by Alex Martinis-Roe & Amy Miller combines performance, video and drawing to critique the gendering of the female body. These artists carefully frame their bodily actions utilising an in-camera level of production.

Brielle Hansen's Where shows a ghostly body that attempts to communicate outside its electronic self. The body here is presented at human proportions projected onto a doorway screen. There is a one-to-one relationship between the viewer and the electronic body in this site-specific work.

In Prick Matthew Perkins transfers sharp pins from one screen to the next utilising only his mouth. The artist explores the gendering of materials and action and their relationship to identity. The performer is carefully framed and the action takes place across two screens.

Gossip pop is both label and outcome for the collaborative music performance and video enterprise of Sue Dodd & Phil Dodd. The work, imbued with a feminist mandate, transforms tabloid narratives of celebrity into contemporary art versions of pop songs.

Free artist floor talks with Annie Wilson, Briele Hansen and Matthew Perkins and live performance by Alex Martinis-Roe & Amy Miller 3pm Saturday 10 June 2006

Gallery Hours are Tuesday - Sunday 1.00 - 6.00pm. For further information and/or images please contact Programs Manager Jan Duffy on 9209 6794 or email info@lindenarts.org

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Live performance: Alex Martinis-Roe & Amy Miller
Floor talks: Annie Wilson, Briele Hansen & Matthew Perkins

3pm Saturday 10 June

PERFORMANCE:
Alex Martinis-Roe and Amy Miller's performance The Drawing Room is a humourous take on Victorian dioramas, using gesture to critique the gendering of the female body. The Victorian architecture of Linden provides the perfect interface between their 'real time', 'real space' performance and their video projections. In 2004 Alex and Amy formed SisterHood, an ongoing collaborative project that uses performance, video and drawing.

ARTISTS' TALKS:
Annie Wilson will talk about endurance, movement and memory in relation to her work In Your Own Time. These have been central concerns in her recently completed PHD in the Faculty of Art & Design at Monash University. Annie has been exhibiting in Australia since 1998. She has also exhibited in Singapore as part of Media Arts Asia Pacific and the Physics Space in New Zealand.

Briele Hansen will discuss the exploration of real and imagined physical realities and the relationships between time, object and location in her work. She sees her work as a kind of butterfly net of time codes and tape loops catching the flutters of physical and psychological states. In 2004 Briele received both a Ian Potter Cultural Trust Grant and a Melbourne City Laneway Commissions. In the same year she completed a Master of Art by Research from RMIT.

Matthew Perkins will discuss the curatorial premise for Anxious Bodies and the relationship of his work Prick to this concept. He will also discuss the Video Data Bank (an archive) from where the works of Bruce Nauman and Vito Acconci were accessed and the need for similar conservation strategies to be established within Australia. Matthew has recently been involved in the Spatial Research Group (SRG) at Monash University's Faculty of Art & Design where he is a lecturer and studio co-ordinator in photomedia.

NO BOOKINGS REQUIRED
ADMISSION FREE

 

 

 

Matthew PERKINS: Prick
image: Matthew Perkins Prick