Overview

Film can be simultaneously trace, construction and occasion of the event. EVENT features work by four artists from Australia and Europe whose moving image practices reveal a deep acculturation of cinematic forms as they work to create as well and the psychological as well as physical experience of various performative acts.

These artists create video and film work for installation encounter that draws on, and/or disrupts cinematic rhythms that are as 'natural' as spoken language. For example, in their work we may note cinema referenced as a structural blueprint for conceptual video action. The use of looped narrative is another such feature. Extended performance is another.

EVENT is distinguished by two further avenues of relation between cinema and its shadowing in the realms of contemporary art. The first involves the manner in which these artists borrow certain grammatical structures from cinema in order to create an experience of estrangement, both of their characters from one-another and their visual environment, but also between an audience and character, setting up a form of detached yet compulsive fascination on the part of the audience member.

The second lies in the extraordinarily strong memory traces evoked by particular cinematic shot conventions: the lingering, forensic close-up; the empty highway rolling beneath the camera; the single figure framed wide-shot in the landscape; clusters of figures moving away from the camera with unknown purpose. Each encounter with such shots?and there are hundreds of other examples?floods the viewer with both visual and experiential memories; with points of familiarity and emotion; with a sense of having been here before.

Angelica Mesiti's The Line of Lode and Death of Charlie Day was produced with the support of dLux media arts. Elena Nasanen's residency and project have been supported by Arts Council of Finland, AVEK and FRAME: Finnish Fund for Art Exchange. Kate Murphy gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the NSW Government through the Ministry for the Arts. Kate Murphy's Rehearsal (for Saint Vitus) was also produced with the support of Breaking Ground, the Ballymun Regeneration Ltd. per cent for art program (Dublin). Mel O'Callaghan's To The End has been supported by The Australia Council. The Artspace Residential Studio Program is supported by the Keir Foundation.