the art life

From Carrie Miller

I know what you’re wondering. What’s that smell? Well, it’s the decomposing corpse of video art in the stockrooms of prestigious contemporary art galleries around the world.

Twenty years ago none of us could have predicted the breathtaking ascendancy of the video art genre and its attendant market in recent times. After years of poor old Mike Parr plugging earnestly away, it seemed that the genre suddenly exploded a few years ago.



But neither could we have predicted its demise. The so-called art expert that created this blog certainly didn’t see it coming. He put all his now rotting eggs into the basket of video art with his forthcoming book on the topic. From here on in, it can only sit impotently in his bottom drawer, a mere redundancy, a cultural irrelevance.

It’s not often that the death of an art form can be precisely pinned down. But let the record show that October the 9th, 2009 was the day the music died for video art.

Up until this point artists have only ever dealt in the perfume of the video form. Appropriately enough in this postmodern world, it’s taken an outsider to distill it to its essence. His name is Steve Walsh and he’s my hero. In a mere 47 seconds he puts an end to an entire industry of filmic pretension and posturing. With his crappy promotional video for an epi-centre of bourgeois leisure at the heart of Australia’s most vacuous city – Sydney’s Centennial Park - Walsh has done what even the great Tony Schwensen would struggle to: capture the banal truths of middle-class existence in a succinct and brutally unconsidered way. This amateur has achieved what Manet could have only hoped to with Le déjeuner sur l'herbe had he been a bit less French.

I don’t want to panic any contemporary art collectors out there, but you know those discs with that guy skateboarding in the rain that you tripped over each to acquire? The following is irrefutable proof that you’ve been had.

If you're viewing this post via email, click here to see the video. Caution: probably not safe for work.

Labels: Carrie Miller, video art

"In my work there has always been a direct relationship between two components: the idea and its production. The production apsect is the result of my fascination with the technical nexus between stills and video, and the failure of either medium to capture either an elusive truth or the essence of my front-of-lens collaborators. In my current show I've harnessed a technique that crosses stills and video to explore power, ecstasy and mortality. I have been working with internationally-ranked hiphop dancers and tricksters, who arch across different landscapes in an attempt to flee from gravity for a short time.



Making of...

"The exhibition is called La petite mort (a little death) which is a French phrase describing the small melancholy after orgasm. In the same way the descent to earth from the ecstasy of weightlessness is a little death as we approach the realities of earth bound mortality. My Masters degree was an exploration of cinematic approaches to portraiture, and for this current exhibition I have built a special lighting rig that allows me to shoot bursts of 40 still frames in 4 seconds as the dancers move across the frame. These images are then composited into large format prints (90cm x 160cm) and video works. The show runs from 8th – 19th December at DEPOT GALLERY, 2 Danks St Waterloo " - Hamish Ta-mé.

Labels: new work, photography, video art

"Beuys tried his luck as a pop singer as part of his political commitment. His song 'Sonne statt Reagan' attacks Ronald Reagan's arms policy. The song was issued as a record and Beuys appeared before big audiences with it during the peace movement's demonstrations and also with the group Die Desserteure in the ARD television broadcast 'Bananas' on 3.7.1982. 'Regen'', pronounced like 'Reagan', is the German for 'rain.'"

UbuWEb via Art Forum

Labels: conceptual art, politics, video art

"Hou Hanru's 2007 Istanbul Biennial was a notoriously unwieldy affair. "Not Only Possible But Also Necessary: Optimism in a Time of Global War" assembled an unprecedented number of artists in multiple venues (two of them unreachable except via taxi), under an equally inflated curatorial thesis inspired by Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's weighty examination of the contemporary world order. The four-member, all-female curatorial collective behind this year's Biennial, the Zagreb-based What, How and For Whom (WHW), have clearly taken Hou's version as a model of what not to do.



"What Keeps Mankind Alive?" is a line in Bertolt Brecht's 1928 cabaret-musical The Threepenny Opera. WHW summon the Marxist playwright Brecht as a general symbol of their own declared commitment to "a full-fledged political program that is also completely aesthetic." Then, they relegate him to the catalog to do what they do best: curate. A comparatively smaller number of artworks are organized according to two main curatorial premises as simple as they are effective. A selection of adroit (but not immediately familiar) works from the 1970s through the 1990s provide historical grounding, while artists scattered across the Biennial's three sites act as binding agents for the exhibition as a whole.

"Viewing a selection of artists at all three venues—the waterfront customs depot Antrepo; a former tobacco warehouse in the historically European quarter of Galata; and an old Greek school which shut down in the 1980s for lack of students—surpasses a sense of mere déjà vu. Artists KP Brehmer and Vyacheslav Akhunov recur from last time, and themselves combine into a curatorial thesis in and of themselves, one which reiterates WHW's catalog call for the "politicization of culture" in the face of the "culturalization of politics," yet doesn't stiffen into a specific art historical narrative. At Antrepo, the Tashkent-based Akhunov's "Leniniana" series of collages (1977–1982) bury Lenin, his followers, and an imposing metropolis in heavy snowbanks. Up to their knees in snow, but nonetheless pursuing their revolutionizing goals, the characters' actions are rendered both futile and entrenched in a classical, genre vocabulary. At the tobacco warehouse, a square meter pedestal is covered in open matchboxes that house tiny reproductions of nearly two decades of Akhunov's often satirical collages and sketches: a miniature rebuttal to the grandiosity of the propagandistic imagery the artist so often manipulates..."

Walking the 11th Istanbul Biennial (With or Without Video), Art In America.

Labels: Biennales, international exhibitions, video art

Who's that woman in black with the pearls? It's Emily Fitzgerald of the Australian Patrol, that's who, and she's on a mission to capture the fun and frivolity of openings, art festivals and all gatherings where the cognoscenti gather to compare opinions, thoughts and...gloves.

Australian Patrol arrive at openings with a discreete mini DV in hand and a gi-normous microphone to buttonhole people for their insights. With 73 videos and counting on their YouTube Channel their mission statement is to seek "out the eccentricities and obscurities in the Australian cultural and artistic world." Recent uploads have included such luminaries as artists Guy Peppin, Rose Vickers, Joe Furlonger and Jun Chen talking about their work, exhibitions such as The Rex Irwin Ceramics Show 09 and the Cockatoo Island installations - they even managed to buttonhole John "Daddy Mac" McDonald having a good old chinwag with an admirer about the Venice Biennale at a Ray Hughes Gallery wine 'n' cheese soiree. So far, mission statement achieved.




The Australian Patrol arrived in their Sunday best for last week's opening of the 58th Blake Prize, capturing the full gamut of the wise and wonderful opinions of people who brought with them their own axes, no doubt looking for a place to grind 'em.

Can't see the video? Click here to view.

Labels: art openings, video art

"The best thing I’ve seen so far is the focused survey of the work of Bruce Nauman in — ta-da! — the U.S. pavilion. There’s a gallery of Nauman’s bronze hand sculptures and another with hanging heads spewing water. A third, with a turning mobile of taxidermy forms alongside a video of a man skinning a fox, and a video of a man making a balloon toy and someone spilling coffee, forms intricate interweaving psychic grids of chaos, anxiety, reverie, and violence. The other good show was at the British Pavilion. There’s been a lot of complaining about the long lines and mandatory scheduling there, and most of the reports I got from people who did go said the 40-minute video by Steve McQueen, Giardini, was “disappointing” and not worth the wait. But I was surprised by how resonant and haunting the film is. There’s no story to speak of, just shots of the Giardini off season, between biennales. You see boarded-up buildings, close-ups of insects and plants, greyhounds foraging for food, piles of garbage. Even though McQueen’s sense of filmmaking is pretty pedestrian, it’s a real Venetian death trip.

"From there I saw as many of the pavilions as I could. My Worst in Show award was a three-way tie between Australia, Japan, and France. Australia’s Shaun Gladwell parked a burned-out Road Warrior–ish car outside the pavilion. Inside there’s a video of motorcycle rider stopping to contemplate a dead kangaroo in the middle of a desert. Protruding from the side of the pavilion is a motorcycle. In the Japanese pavilion, Miwa Yanagi exhibits a series of huge, god-awful photographs of grotesque naked women. In an accompanying text, a writer raves that these crappy pictures “will bring great joy not only to the Japanese Pavilion but to the Venice Biennale as a whole.”

Saltz: Highlights of the Venice Biennale; Plus, Worst in Show, New York Magazine.

Labels: Venice Biennale, video art

It turns out that not only is Sean Lowry a doctor, but he's also a former member of herbal-hippy-metal band Def FX. For those who came in late - or perhaps have conveniently forgetten what it was like - the early 1990s were a lot like the way things are now, just more crap, and Def FX were the promising young band of the day. Why are we telling you this? Because Sean Lowry is back in his guise as successful contemporary artist with a mission, namely to post a "collection of popular songs reinterpreted within the moving image." We're not certain what "within" means in this context, but Lowry's Wikipedia entry explains thusly:

"Sean Lowry (born 1968) is a Sydney based artist, writer & musician. After considerable commercial success in Australia, Asia and North America during the 1990s with seminal Australian electronic rock band Def FX [...] [he] is now exhibiting a body of experimental audiovisual work (recently exhibited in San Francisco and broadcast in Germany in 2008 under the moniker of Lapdancer). A panelist at “The Contemporary Collaborator In An Interdisciplinary World” (2008 Annual Conference of the College Art Association, Dallas-Fort Worth, USA), and a Lecturer, Creative Arts/Fine Arts, School of Drama, Fine Arts and Music, University of Newcastle, Australia (awarded University of Newcastle 'Lecturer of the Year, 2007'), Lowry is currently developing a major publishing project titled 'The Agnostic Model: Beyond Art & Anti-Art'. A new album titled 'I Got My Headphones & My Laptop' is due to be released in 2009. A new audiovisual project titled 'Lapdancer2: a collection of popular songs reinterpreted within the moving image', will also be exhibited/released on DVD/CD in 2009."

The first in the series for Lapdancer 2 videos is a rendition of Smoke On The Water [featuring Charles Famous] and - perhaps giving some clue to the meaning of "within" - presents a man in his pants at a council tip:



Further videos in the series can be seen at Sean Lowry's YouTube Channel

Labels: music, video art

Sediment True, from Gary Deirmendjian.

Labels: video art

From Carrie Miller...

Pinning down the meaning of Stuart Bailey’s recent video performance is like trying to feed an oyster into a parking meter. That’s probably to be expected in a work like Desert Mouth which depicts the artist wandering around in circles in the Californian desert without his pants - or his mind by the looks of things.

The scene is one that conjures up the type of forgetfulness that drugs induce, reinforced by the references to marijuana in his accompanying sculptural pieces. But Bailey rejects the idea that the meaning of the work is literally associated with the altered states brought about by drug use. So what’s the motivation behind his Lynch-like, pants-off escapade?

The video and accompanying sculptures seem to be concerned with the alternative states of being brought about by drug use. Certainly, you don’t seem to be thinking about much out there in the desert except perhaps “Where are my pants?” What’s the conceptual point of ‘Desert Mouth’?

Stuart Bailey: I'm not actually interested in alternative states of being. I approve of the the idea that the role of drugs in creative pursuits is pretty bogus. What I'm really interested in doing is using the cliches surrounding the use of pot to explore other ideas. I try to use popular notions about pot use such as forgetting, paranoia, thirst and a disconnection from the realities of life, to discuss the broader implications of this kind of disconnection. I see this as willful and something that suits the individual who decides to use / be disconnected.



When you say you’re concerned with“the broader implications of this kind of disconnection” are you talking about a more general level of disconnect members of late-capitalist society have to the political reality they’re immersed in (but often conveniently ignore)? A type of collective cultural forgetfulness?

SB: But it's not solely this political disconnection I'm looking at. I'm also interested in the kind of empty bravado that seems so common. Things like the hollowness of the low-level nationalism that is so popular in Australia or the recently damaged belief in the promise of unchecked capitalism. They're all a kind of delusion bought on by a narrow focus.

Jasmin Stephens said of your work that ‘Stuart has evolved a stylish, protest vocabulary’. Can you explain how this operates in an obscure work like ‘Desert Mouth’?

SB: In the Desert Mouth installation there is a fair amount of flag waving and claim-staking, in the sculptural element particularly. Having said that I try to avoid having specific political or social issues referenced directly in my work these days. I think it can end up limiting possible readings of the work and also tends to date it. I’m more interested in getting to the anxiety associated with this quickly shifting ground we’re presented with and how people respond and attempt to control things. In one way Desert Mouth tries to talk about how exposed and vulnerable we can be.

So do you think art can take a political and ethical stance against the scourge of rampant capitalism – to rouse us from our “delusional” state - or is it always already just another commodity amidst a sea of mindless consumption?

SB: Art can try, and I guess you could say I’d like to think it does make a difference. On the flipside of this I feel that contemporary art’s small audience doesn’t make it the best medium to try and influence people on a vast scale. It would be better to make a movie, start a political group or even write a song.

‘CRYPTOPHILISTINISM’, curated by Amita Kirpalani and featuring Stuart Bailey, James Dodd, Sarah Goffman, Scott Morrison, Justin Trendall runs from 6 - 28 February at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces ‘Desert Mouth’ runs from 27 February - 15 March 2008 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Newtown.

Labels: Carrie Miller, interviews, performance art, video art

A few months back we posted a YouTube video by Brian Alfred, an artist exploring painting and animation. Happily, we've now discovered this short doco on his work...



ArtFlick001: Brain Alfred, via YouTube. Can't see the soothing video? Click here to view...

Labels: animation, painting, video art

"... a found hula hoop stands and rolls to the sea. Perhaps it says something about needing to know and taking steps towards an ultimate surrender ..."

Gary Deirmendjian, "down down down" ... the yellow hoop hears a calling, 2008.

Labels: new work, video art

What's the biggest threat to the continuing existence of the universe? The Large Hadron Collider? Bah! It's possible meeting of positively charged Kenny Rogers particles with exotic anti-Renny Kodgers free radicals. Below is video documentation of the near-death of the universe...



Kenny Rogers Meets Renny Kodgers, from Renny via YouTube

Reading this post via email? Click here to see the video.

Labels: performance art, stalking, video art

An evening screening of key Australian video works followed by a full day of talks and personal accounts exploring what might be learnt from video art practices, and approaches to collecting and archiving the medium for the future.

Accompanying the exhibition Video Logic, this program includes speakers Stephen Jones, Danni Zuvela, John Conomos, Louise Curham, Lyndal Jones and Andrew Frost with facilitators John Gillies and Ross Harley.

Labels: conferences, public galleries, public lectures, video art

Good Song by Blur, a video by David Shrigley, from YouTube. Can't see the funny sad video? Click here to view

Labels: animation, video art

Excerpts from the films of James Whitney, early pioneer of computer animation...




"Between 1950 and 1955, Witney laboured to construct a truly astounding masterpiece, Yantra. The film was produced entirely by hand. By punching grid patterns in 5" by 7" cards with a pin, James was able to paint through these pinholes onto other 5" x 7" cards, to create images of rich complexity and give the finished work a very dynamic and flowing motion. Footage from an early version of Yantra was shown at the historic Vortex Concerts in San Francisco's Morrison planetarium which began in 1957. Here it acquired its soundtrack, Henk Badings’ "Cain and Abel".

"Analogue computer equipment developed by brother John, allowed James to complete Lapis (1965) in two years, when it might have taken seven years otherwise. James drew dot patterns again for this film, but the camera was positioned using computer control, allowing each image to be overlaid from multiple angles. In this piece, smaller circles oscillate in and out in an array of colors resembling a kaleidoscope while being accompanied by Indian sitar music. The patterns become hypnotic and trance-inducing..."

Wikipedia

Labels: cinema, video art

Performing for the Camera, curated by Kelly Doley and Diana Smith, is currently showing at Firstdraft until August 2nd. An impressive collection of pieces by artists working at the intersection of video and performance, we asked Diana Smith about the background to the show...


How would you describe the sort of practice that is featured in the show? Is it video, perfromance, or something else?

Diana Smith: The works that are featured in the show are ‘performances’ that are staged for the video camera. They are first and foremost performances however; inevitably they are video works as they are captured through the camera lens, and in most cases only viewed through a screen. The artists approach performance and the documentation of the ‘live’ act in a variety of ways. In some cases the camera is an objective onlooker that simply documents a particular task, such as blowing up an air mattress; while at other points it is directly acknowledged and serenaded lovingly.

Are the artists in the show representative of a particular way of thinking about contemporary performance? Would all the people in this show consider themselves to be 'artists'?

DS: I’m not sure that the artists in the show are representative of a particular way of thinking about contemporary performance but rather reveal the convergence of performance and video art practice. The artists selected are part of what I've observed to be an emergent trend of ‘performative video’ and are indicative of the pervasive performative condition of much video art at the present time. This is by no means a new mode of expression and can be traced back to the mid 1960s with artists such as Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman, who literally turned the camera on themselves in fabricated situations or in their studio. In Sydney, this type of work started to emerge in the 1970s with the appearance of Mike Parr and Peter Kennedy at Inhibodress Gallery. Drawn to the real time immediacy of video, Parr and Kennedy also used the camera to document their gallery performances such as Idea Demonstrations (1972) and Trans Art 1(1972). The video camera developed during this time as a fairly natural companion to experimental performance practice and continues to do so today. I imagine that the people in the show would all consider themselves to be ‘artists’ but perhaps they would equally consider themselves to be ‘performers’ or performance makers or video artists. Having said that many of the artists in the show have visual arts background and have often strayed from more traditional disciplines such as painting and sculpture and often incorporate this practice into their performance works. For instance in Agatha Gothe-Snape’s Corporeal Mime-Daily Practice (Crest 1964) (2008) she literally transforms her body into a living breathing Op art canvas. In this works a cropped image of her truncated torso moving inside a black and white shirt, which references mime performance along with painting, creates a mesmerising optical illusion.

To what extent do the artists tackle the vexing question of the language of narrative film in their use of video?

DS: The artists in the show are more preoccupied with the contemporary compulsion for one’s existence to be expressed and inscribed through the camera lens than exploring the language of narrative film in their use of video. The works selected perpetuate and critique the incessant desire and inevitable failure to perform in a culture that is addicted to being ‘seen on screen’. With the proliferation of screen-based technologies, the advent of reality TV programming and the prevalence of surveillance cameras in public spaces, the experience of being filmed has become normalised. Trends towards self-surveillance via YouTube, Facebook and the ability to upload information on the net has spurred on a generation of artists to pick up a video camera, stand in front of it and press record in order to express themselves. The language and conventions of narrative film are of course embedded in the way artists approach performing for the camera and the construction of screen personas. One artist who tackles these questions most directly is Kevin Platt in his Clark Gabel Dines Alone and Shaves His Moustache (2008) in which he considers the role of celebrity. In this performance Platt imagines himself as the iconic American actor Clark Gabel complete with his signature moustache and slicked back hair. However, in Platt’s vision Gabel is not the heroic Rhett Butler from Gone With The Wind (1939), but simply eats a meal and shaves his moustache. The language and traditions of narrative film are acknowledged but ultimately obliterated, as simply nothing happens. What appears at first to be the beginning of a narrative turns into a task based performance in which the audience witnesses Platt’s ritual of eating an entire bowl of spaghetti bolognese.

How have artist used available technology in their work?

DS: The majority of artists in the show have simply used their own hand held video camera and basic editing software such as iMovie to create the desired effect. In most cases it is not only about what technology is available to the artist but also what setting, props, sound and lighting are at hand at that time. The works are often reminiscent of a home movie or a youtube video and are often shot in the comfort of the artists’ own homes. For instance Kate Murphy's I've been to Paradise (2002) the artist passionately mouths the words to Never Been to Me by Charlene on top of her beige leatherette couch in her living room; while in Liam Benson ’s Desiderata (2008) the camera becomes witness to Benson’s private ritual of dressing up under his hills hoist in his suburban backyard.

Humour has been a dominant trend in both video work generally and in performance. Does humour and irony play a part in these artists work?

DS: Humour is central to the works in the show. I’m not sure if it possible to produce work anymore that is not partly humorous or ironic, particularly in performance. When you turn the camera on yourself there needs to be a certain element of self reflexivity, otherwise it becomes a little bit silly! There needs to be a certain acknowledgment from the artist/performer that someone on the other side is watching, or inevitably, will be.

Labels: exhibition, performance art, video art

Air Subway Monster, by Joshua Allen Harris, from YouTube.

If you're viewing this post via email, click here to see the video.

Labels: installation, sculpture, video art

From Tape Projects...

We want it - any, many or all. If you've got sound, video, animation or anything experimental for screen or speaker then we have three wonderful opportunities for you to contribute or collaborate.


123TV is back, due to go to air again this September, broadcasting our 4th Season on much loved (well, by us anyway) Channel 31. We will be putting together another eclectic program of animations, videos and video clips made by Australian artists alongside a few 'special guest programmed' episodes.

We are currently seeking both narrative and experimental submissions.

If you have new work (or even slightly used, but good as new work) to show, please download the submission form from www.tapeprojects.org and post in your pieces before July 30.




This is an invitation to be part of the Exquisite Creature TV Totem Pole.

A stack of TV's will form the vessel in which a mass of screen-based works will loop to reveal a shape-shifting mutant being. It is up to you to choose one body part from a creature, real or imagined, and create a 30 second video or animation.

You are also asked to offer up objects/images/tactile paraphernalia that relate to your video piece to create extensions of the TVs, further adorning the TV body.

Work must be received by Wednesday June 18th 2008 along with a completed submission form downloadable from our website.

For more details have a look at www.tapeprojects.org or contact zoe@tapeprojects.org.



Tape Projects DVD Issue Four is in the pipeline. We are now seeking your new screen & sound works to be included in this limited edition release. If you’re sitting on something within the realm of short/experimental art videos, animations, hybrid media or sound piece then send it through! Better yet, ignore what you’re sitting on and send us something new that you haven’t even made yet. The chosen works will be included in a 200 edition DVD which will be launched mid August at a performance screening night.

Submission deadline is July 22nd. More info coming soon at www.tapeprojects.org

Labels: call for submissions, Melbourne, video art

Please Stand By #9, by Elvis Richardson.

If you're seeing this post via email click here to view.

Labels: video art

From Rory Dufficy...

Bill Viola’s work has always seemed suffused with a reflection of meaning – the outlines of something profound are visible, and the gestures and motions and surfaces seem to reveal something, but too often end up as shimmering, depthless echoes of profundity. His work, with its increasing spectacular technical achievements and visual lustre, has always been concerned with the numinous, but he has never been a truly religious artist, and he lacks the necessary madness, the febrile yearning, of an authentic seeker like, say, Mark Rothko.


Bill Viola, Fire Woman, 2005.
The works that prompt these thoughts are excerpts from a much longer work, apparently amounting to four hours of video, which was made to accompany a production of Tristan and Isolde. The works, re-christened (as it were) under a catchall title of The Tristan Project were shown in two locations, one piece in the Art Gallery of NSW and the other two in St Saviour’s church in Redfern [both until May 17]. It is difficult to know how to read these works, for they appear to be distinct vignettes, short little tales that would have been distracting to view as the backdrop to the opera, yet at the same time the extremity and size of the gestures we see are completely without context, and the grandiloquence of these movements seems hollow, like listening to the empty bombast of The Ride of the Valkyries without the surrounding Ring Cycle.

We can treat these works as a whole, and they are clearly selected to rhyme with each other in more or less obvious ways. The Fall into Paradise (2005), at the AGNSW starts with a small light, the pinhole of a camera obscura, which gradually enlarges and separates into the bodies of (presumably) Tristan and Isolde, and it is revealed that the viewer is underwater, watching their liquid descent or deliquescence. Like this piece, the two shown at St Saviour’s – a gorgeous Romanesque church opposite a housing commission high rise – concern watery transfigurations. Showing these pieces in a church was an inspired choice, and the Protestant modesty of the chapel lends a monkish resignation to the works that probably wouldn’t have been visible if they had been displayed in a more secular context.


Bill Viola, The Fall Into Paradise, 2005.
Images courtesy Art Gallery of NSW
Viola has reached a point – of skill, of funding – where all his works are expertly lit, shot, edited and conceived; these three display an easy mastery of form and a careful economy that polish the veneer spiritual depth. In the best piece, Fire Woman (2005), a woman in a hooded robe walks towards a wall of fire, and then collapses backwards, disappearing into a pool of water, before the water, oleaginous and black, slowly swallows the fire which is muted to a lambent glow and then to nothing – all this happens over a relatively brief period, but the pace is stately, the water and fire gorgeous – one is so busy being impressed that one forgets to be moved.

Bill Viola’s major work, coming as it does after heroic modernism and the equally heroic deconstruction of modernist assumptions has an historical analogue in Mannerism (however disputed that term is today). Major mannerists, following as they did the heroic high Renaissance, were brilliant masters of line and form, and Parmigianino’s paintings, for example, can often seem to be occasions for ‘mere’ virtuosity – Madonna of the Long Neck being the most obvious and most brilliant. Uncharitably, one could Viola’s grandiose performances as a symptom of some sort of decline of meaning in contemporary art, but it wouldn’t be right or fair. Viola’s work is painfully earnest in its belief that it conveys some sort spiritual meaning but, if it is religious, it is with the sweet evanescence of incense from a smoking censer, not the unutterable grandeur of an icon.

Labels: installation, public galleries, video art