How to Make the Famous Pisco Sour; A Videotape inThree Locations (1986), 16:10 mins, Tokyo.

Pisco Sour represents a shift beyond earlier works in its dense layering of subject-matter and imagery. Initiated in Australia, continued in Japan, and completed in Australia over a four-year period, the work draws upon a core imagery of a bullock dray, a male figure in silhouette, a Japanese mask and a bottle of Pisco Sour. These appear in varied permutations alongside other seemingly random images to form a series of telescopic views (screens within screens) which allow the viewer to move back and forth between different visual planes. Verbal narrative and textual statement within the work create a sense of tension while suggesting that history and meaning are never fixed. As Callas has noted, the work presents something of a conundrum, its title a metaphoric recipe for the potential ‘souring’ of things.1

There is also an installation version of this work from 1986. It was included in the “Australian Video Festival” Art Gallery of NSW Sydney (1986) and “Pleasure of the Gaze” Art Gallery of Western Australia Perth (1986)

• 1. Rachel Kent from “Peter Callas: Initialising History, video works 1980-1999”