Judi Stack and Bob Weis,

You, Them and Us (1976-77)

Ewing & George Paton Galleries (Melbourne University Students Union). 12-23 September, 1977.

This installation consisted of two banks of 9 monitors each and 2 video cameras. Stack's bed and wardrobe were placed in the installation space and another monitor plays back a recording of a conversation between Weiss and Stack. It was as though one had intruded in the most private spaces of their lives. One of the monitor banks showed three video tapes simultaneously – the original version of You, Them and Us, which was first shown at Open Processes in February 1977 under the title He, She and Me. These tape show “the stereotyped TV woman (sex object, mum) the second the man myth (athlete, commentator, killer) while the third is simply a real life shot of people crossing Swanston St,”1 which is quietly replaced by an explicit sequence of a woman masturbating. On the second bank of screens the viewer is, after a short interval, confronted with their own image on the screens.2

1Review of You Them and Us in The Age, 13 September, 1977.

2See Helen Vivian (ed), When You Think About Art: The Ewing and George Paton Galleries, 1971-2008, Melbourne: Macmillan Art Publishing (2008), 47.