Current Commissioned Works
For the Experimenta Speak to Me 5th International Biennial of Media Art, Experimenta will present five newly commissioned artworks by Australian artists: Christopher Fulham, Jess MacNeil, Wade Marynowsky and Katie Turnbull. Working across diverse disciplines including robotics, animation and digital video, each of these artists will present a new work of significant ambition and scale that explores experimental and emerging art forms.
For its fifth commission, Experimenta is delighted to announce an exciting new collaboration with New York based Australian artist Ian Burns. A junkyard alchemist, Burns uses found objects and video screens to create large‐scale, sculptural installations that draw upon consumer culture. The new work, anywhere and here, has been commissioned in partnership with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). It will be shown as part of Ian Burns: In the Telling, which opens at ACMI on 24 July 2012 running until 20 January 2013.
Finally, Experimenta is working in partnership with Federation Square to present a large scale work by internationally renowned Seoul based artists Young‐Hae Chang Heavy Industries For this commission, the acclaimed artistic duo will produce a single channel text based animation that will be synchronised to a jazz music score.
IAN BURNS
Anywhere and here, 2012
Ian Burns at ACMI presents an inventive work assembled anywhere and here from everyday domestic objects sourced from retail stores such as K‐Mart and Bunnings. Each sculptural assemblage uses live video and sculpture to interrogate the screen image, its construction and representation of truth. The newly commissioned work, anywhere and here, draws on consumer culture in terms of image and product consumption. It serves to undermine the power of the virtual image on the technological screen. The absurd, convoluted ways that Burns creates his live videos destabilises the strength of moving image clichés.
Presented in partnerhsip with the Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI)
Christopher Fulham
Milieu, 2012
Canberra‐based artist Christopher Fulham uses his time‐based video works to explore perception, awareness and attention. Fulham is fascinated by the symbiotic relationship between an artistic intent, captured moments and the post‐production process. Milieu is a 58 minute, single screen work, which was filmed in a single session. The artist captures a public, urban setting in the melancholy mid‐afternoon. The work provokes curiosity as viewers are drawn into the inner lives of those depicted on screen.
JESS MACNEIL
Sparrowhawk, 2012
For her Experimenta work, London‐based artist Jess MacNeil transports viewers to Paris in winter. Outside the iconic Hotel de Ville, a game of Sparrowhawk is played on ice. In this work, the bodies of skaters will be digitally erased, their presence revealed by their shadows and effect on the ice. Ice skaters become visible in brief flashes when they make physical contact with one another, punctuating the work and heightening the sense of disorientation and aesthetic tension. Synched across three screens, the work is immersive and poetic.
WADE MARYNOWSKY
The Acconci Robot, 2012
Wade Marynowsky continues his interest in performative robotics. The Acconci Robot is a playful but mute robot in the form of an everyday household object: a robotic wardrobe that follows unsuspecting audience members throughout the exhibition space. The work references the performance work by Vito Acconci entitled Follow Piece (1969), in which Acconci randomly selected a passer‐by and followed that person, until he or she disappeared into a private place where Acconci could not follow. This artwork is a cheeky inversion of interaction, following viewers whilst their backs are turned, but stopping in its tracks as they turn to see who is following.
Katie Turnbull
Modern Vanitas, 2012
Katie Turnbull presents Modern Vanitas: an engaging animation work that mixes analogue and digital practices and is a contemporary version of a pre‐cinema toy, resembling the zoetrope. In this contemporary version, the images are the artist’s interpretation of modern day Vanitas, still life images in the tradition of memento mori. Symbols of life, death, time, globalisation, digital technology, communications and transient ephemera are all represented. Drawing upon the morbid and religious overtones of the baroque Vanitas genre art, Turnbull’s images are a reminder of the transience of life.
Young‐Hae Chang Heavy Industries
YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES has structured its collaborative practice around the concept of a faceless corporation named yhchang.com. In this corporation, Young‐Hae Chang is CEO and Marc Voge is CIO. The work of YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES is typified by their humour, sharp socio‐political consciousness and an acute sense of timing. Referring to literary genres such as concrete poetry, their work delivers fast moving, complex and unresolved narratives that demand the viewers’ attention. The artists occupy a unique place in the art world, having been amongst the first to employ the Internet as an artistic platform in the mid‐1990s.
Presented in partnership with Federation Square
