Artist in Residence
Tangara
ACMI commissions 'Stereo Sequences', the ambitious new exhibition by artist Shaun Gladwell.
Shaun Gladwell is a long time skater and an internationally acclaimed video artist. In his breakthrough work, Storm Sequence (2000), he can be seen turning slow loops on his deck across the Bondi Beach foreshore while thunder clouds hang heavy just off the coast. On the surface, the video references urban subculture, the graceful, alienated form of the skater, but beyond that there is a more complex artistic purpose. The composition is lyrical and meditative, focused partly on the movement and partly on the dramatic landscape in which the movement takes place.
This tension - between the figure, the motion and the environment - became a hallmark of Gladwell's work as he rose to prominence at home and overseas. You can see it again in the series MADDESTMAXIMVS: Planet and Stars Sequence (2009) and also the single-channel work Pataphysical Man (2005). In each of these videos, the figure is moving constantly in the frame but going nowhere, and this arrested motion is oddly hypnotising.
Next week we open the doors on an exhibition called Shaun Gladwell: Stereo Sequences. The show features an ambitious new body of work, commissioned by ACMI, that explores and expands on the themes of Gladwell's career. On the surface, there are references to various subcultures of movement - BMX riders, pole dancers, trials bike riders, motorcyclists - and beyond that there is a rich and compelling artistic vision; bodies and machines in motion, reacting and responding to their surroundings.
Published Thursday, 26 May 2011
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