Compose an image; re-cord it and put it to print. This process may seem organic, but what occurs between the production and reception of a video; what space is covered in between the independent, singular frames of a moving image? Blue Screen unpacks montage, as the composition of disparate images to create a moving-image, reconciling heterogenous images of movement and time within the exhibition space.
The exhibition proposes montage as more than a stylistic tendency. It allows for a means of critical thinking that values the process of responsive viewing; of re-viewing and re-thinking how an audience may actively engage with a producer, by contouring an understanding independent of the original work. Here video works have been drawn from artists in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to propose an instant where montage is activated through the participation of the viewer.
Sarah Jamieson’s Practice no. 7 is one in a series of video exercises where the she shifts from artist, to subject, to audience. The work recognises the space in between the initial performative gesture and fragments its representation rather than simply attempting to repro- duce it. One becomes conscious not only of the personal re-viewing that occurs within Practice, but aware of how context informs and contours any work. Jamieson fragments the positions of artists and subject; or production and reception to recognise the existence of a third element.
Christopher Bennie continues this conceptual thread, turning the camera on himself to produce a form that is at once familiar and foreign. Bennie performs a series of bodily compositions that are articulated as both surreal and banal. By representing the artist’s own back, Bennie calls in to question the capability of the movement- image to unify and represent disparate elements; that is, one’s own form and that which is unfamiliar or alien.
A Long Wait, by Bababa International, opens with an image of conversational stalemate; of how words fail to communicate understanding. Bereft of the verbal, a lone figure embarks on an arduous journey across an expansive (visual) landscape, and yet the camera never tracks, pans or moves. Instead, from a critical distance Bababa International have produced a brutal metaphor; a means of marking the distance between the viewer and the work. Between each still frame of A Long Wait exists the viewer’s anticipation that provides a formal connection to produce a greater, organic whole*.
Working from a conceptual framework, Dara Gill has produced the new work, Untitled (Sushi Train). Vertical rows of sushi plates endlessly scroll from top to bottom of the screen, resembling an eternal spool of celluloid. For this work Gill approaches the formation of montage as visual narrative, or a means of construction understanding through a series independent entities, connected only by the sushi train that supports them. In rhythm and movement, Gill inverts the tendency to shift the camera, rather than the subject. From this fixed position Gill, similarly to Bababa International, ask of the audience – What is in the image – and demand a response.
Rather than independent and heterogenous, the video works presented in the exhibition function as a line of communication within the gallery space that recognises the necessary place of the viewer both physically and critically. As a constellation of works, Blue Screen suggests that visual montage can function interactively as a means of allowing the viewer to define and accent their spatial and temporal surroundings.
*Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, 1986. Athlone Press: London. p. 28 |
