November Eleven: Work in Progress,
1” video, 19 minutes, 1981
John Hughes with Peter Kennedy
Cast: Carolyn Howard, Paul Davies

November Eleven: Work in Progress is the moving image component of an installation work designed by Peter Kennedy,1 (installation two in a series of three) using a format identical with the earlier installation and again featuring a painted banner (‘November Eleven – An Australian History’, oil on canvas 274 x 305 cm, 1980-1) referencing the tradition of trade union banners, their street performance, and presented here in the service of a critical ‘history painting’.

The video develops themes and strategies from the earlier video, November Eleven (1979), deploying advertising, newsreel footage, children’s books as modes of found ‘performance’ in an ironic (‘blue screen’) play of ‘history’ and myth working around the dual constellations: 1890/1975 and 1968/1981.

1Bernice Murphy (curator) (1981) Australian Perspecta 1981, A biennial survey of contemporary Australian art, Sydney: AGNSW. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the AGNSW, 28 May – 21 June 1981.