As part of the season Arts Victoria 75, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) ran an exhibition of post-object artworks called Performance, Documents, Film, Video, curated by Geoff Burke and Jennifer Phipps.

In the catalogue notes Bourke acknowledged the proliferation of stimuli from a vast range of sources in the period up to the 1970s, and their perception not simply as sight, sound or touch but in their resonance with memory and a wider notion of consciousness. He comments that the works presented ask for more than traditional means of interpretation through aesthetics and art history since the artists are applying non-traditional methods to understand “Systems associated with the support of various vital life styles as well as those which are more akin to the areas of popular entertainment [which] take on new dimension and meaning at [their] hands...”1

As Phipps noted it was a collection of “works and/or their documentation by Australian artists who are working with non-traditional media … Most of the works are related to activities.”2 The works consisted of performances, the film, video or photographic documentation of ephemeral or transient events, and works in various ways dependent on technological manipulation. Included in the actual objects shown were notebooks, artists books and typed sheets, slides and photographs, films and videotapes and a hologram.

Works by Bush Video, Mike Parr, John Fisher, Philippa Cullen, David Perry and Noel Sheridan are included in the video selection.

The film and video works that were included in the exhibition follow:

Films

Aleks Danko, Joan Grounds, David Lourie, David Stewart
Music composed by Roger Frampton
We should call it a living room, 1975
16mm, colour, sound, 12mins. 

Peter Kennedy
Other than Art’s Sake, 1973-1975
16mm, small black and white, sound, 35mins.

Peter Kennedy/Mike Parr
Idea Demonstrations, 1972
16mm. Black and white, colour, sound, 40mins.

Mike Parr
Rules and Displacement Activities 1, 1973 and 1974
16mm. Black and white, colour, sound, 38mins.

Video Tapes

Bush Video
Isotape 7, 1974, black and white, sound, 30mins.

Philippa Cullen
24 Hour Concert, 1974
black and white, sound, 30mins.
24 hour performance held at Hogarth Gallery, Sydney.

John Fisher
Generation(s) Doppelgaenger, 1975
black and white, sound, 15mins.

Mike Parr
A Statement of Theory, 1975
black and white, sound, 30mins.
Interviewer: Ted Colless.

Dave E. Perry
Utopian Memory Banks presents Fragments from the Past, 1973
black and white, sound, 30mins.

Noel Sheridan
Not Waiting, 1973
black and white, sound, 30mins.
Performers: Noel Sheridan, Guy Warren, Tim Burns.

• 1. Geoff Burke and Jennifer Phipps, Performance, Documents, Film, Video. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria. Exhibition catalogue.
• 2. Ibid.