the art life

Oh Industry comprises a new performance video by Daniel Mudie Cunningham alongside The Jodie Foster Archive, a body of performance work about celebrity and fandom, which began in 1996 and was completed in 2008. Filmed during an artist residency at Newington Armory, the new work Oh Industry, mashes popular culture depictions of naval, military and factory labour with the amusements and distractions of early 20th century modern life. Bette Midler’s performance of the song ‘Oh Industry’ from Beaches (1988) and references to the popular motion picture serial The Perils of Pauline (1914) intersect with conveyor belt choreography to suggest how the machine age and its class structures were shaped during the rise of modernity and industrialisation.

Daniel Mudie Cunningham is a Sydney based artist, curator and writer whose work primarily negotiates the queering of visual histories, popular cultures and oppositional identity politics. Cunningham’s art practice incorporates performance, video and installation. His practice is profiled at www.danielmcunningham.com

image: Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Oh Industry, 2009, HDV video, 16:9, 4 min 11 sec.

The Project was assisted by a grant from the New South Wales Government – Arts NSW, through a program administered by the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA)





Mel Curtiss’s new work, made for MOP Projects, repeats her interest in the “spatial turn” currently re-energising fields as diverse as architecture, urban studies, geography, sociology, and social theory. The territory explored in this work concerns the cinematic nature of architecture and the dynamic relationship between space and identity.

The figure of the whore as urban flâneuse, posturing at the intersection of “streetwalker” and “street”, drives an aesthetic of “re-use” and “making do” in a mixed-media installation that is at least one part road movie. Curtiss poaches diverse cultural terrains to re-write material and
social spaces constituted by discourses of pathology and pollution.

Mel Curtiss is an Adelaide artist whose multi-disciplinary approach, while it is rooted in sculpture and installation, often pursues connection with spaces and communities outside of the gallery. Curtiss primarily explores her interests in the production of space and hierarchical dualism.

Image: Escort Red, digital scan of found cigarette box, Mel Curtiss 2009

The Project was assisted by a grant from the South Australian Government - Ministry for the Arts, through a program administered by Arts SA.

Labels: press releases

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 11:23 am.