PROFILE: SHAUN GLADWELL
: : Penny Craswell
: : printable
version
Shaun Gladwell has recently become one
of Australia’s fastest rising young art stars. Famous
for his video works which often feature him skateboarding as
well
as documenting
a range of street sub-culture arts such as breakdancing and BMX
bike riding, he is not confined to one medium, also creating
paintings
and object/sculptures.
Shaun Gladwell grew up in Sydney’s western
suburbs and began to experiment with video after his ambitions
to become a professional skateboarder were ruined by injury. Gladwell
went to Sydney College of the Arts and then completed postgraduate
research at the College of Fine Arts (COFA) at the University of
New South Wales. In 2001 he won a Samstag International Visual
Arts Scholarship to study at Goldsmith’s College in London
and completed a prestigious residency at the Cité Internationale
des Arts in Paris. A founding member of Imperial Slacks artists
collective in 2000, he exhibited more and more widely and has had
recent exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney,
Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts and at Art in General in New York.
However, Gladwell is no ordinary video-wielding
skateboarder and his artworks are not the fast and choppy videos
you normally see in this genre. From the very beginning of his experiments
with video, taking shots of his brothers jumping over paintings on
their bikes, Gladwell wanted to capture something different.
In the video work Storm Sequence,
Gladwell skateboards freestyle on a flat space of concrete above
the crashing waves at Bondi. Shot slightly from below and with
the footage slowed down to 40%, his repetitive turns and tricks
become mesmerising. In addition, the backdrop to the “stage” features
the ominous black clouds of an approaching storm, and drops of
rain on the camera’s lens hasten the sense of urgency and
danger. Gladwell has likened this scene to the brewing storm-cloud
skyscapes of a Turner painting.
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Shaun Gladwell
Tangara
2003
digital video still
edition of 4
Videography: Gotaro Uematsu & David Griggs
Courtesy the artist and Sherman Galleries, Sydney
Shaun Gladwell
Storm Sequence
2000
digital video
edition of 4
Videoraphy: Techa Noble
Original Soundtrack: Kazumuchi Grime
Courtesy the artist and Sherman Galleries, Sydney
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As well as including references
to art history in this and other works, he also speaks eloquently
about the philosophy behind his work, the concept of the “isolated
figure moving and struggling through the panoramas of nature
(urban and ‘real’) in a possible engagement with
the sublime” .
Other works such as Tangara (2003),
which shows Gladwell hanging upside down from a train handrail
(the camera is also upside down, so that he looks like he is
hanging in space), also document Gladwell’s athleticism,
but each has a distinctive style, here invoking the weightlessness
of zero gravity.
Penny Craswell is an art critic, book reviewer, communications
manager for the National Association for the Visual Arts and arts
book reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald. |
