Recent Australian Video Installation
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne.
The exhibition was specifically “mounted to coincide with the visit of Mr John Hanhardt, Curator of Film and Video at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the tour of the Whitney exhibition, New American Video: A Historical Survey, 1967 – 1980.”1
The exhibition at ACCA showed works by:
Phillip Brophy
Club Video (1985)
Two monitor colour installation
David Chesworth
Do The Metaphysical (1984/85)
Single monitor colour installation with slide projection
John Gillies
Hymn (1983)
Two monitor colour installation
Leigh Hobba
The Continuing Adventures of Albie Quarrel (1986)
Four monitor colour installation
RANDELLI (Robert Randall and Frank Bendinelli)
Adam and Eve (1986)
Single monitor colour installation with photographs
Jill Scott
Double Time (1985), and
Triple Fate (1986)
2 single monitor colour installations with photographs
Extract from the catalogue sheet for Recent Australian Video Installation at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
Most of the works represented in this show are from established video artists, who also work across various media. Because installation is consciously artefact rather than a transparent window on the real, there are many video artists who find installation the most favoured of all exhibition situations. And yet video installation has been mounted only sporadically in Australia. Technological arrangements and sophisticated configurations have not been granted a regular foot in the door within major galleries or exhibition spaces.
… With the revived interest in electronic ceremonies, sculptural environments and new forms of exhibition, video installation may well return as an arena in which the spectator is addressed directly with the specifics of spectacle. Video installation would then become the location for the expansion of a video specific audience-oriented aesthetic.2
Stephen Goddard 1986.
1From the catalogue sheet for Recent Australian Video Installation, Melbourne: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 1986.
2Stephen Goddard, catalogue sheet for Recent Australian Video Installation, Melbourne: Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 1986.
