The Hanging: Video oediV
February 10th 2016
Katie Winten
Angela Tiatia video work from Video Video at Campbelltown Arts Centre
There’s no doubt that we all enjoy moving image in some form – be it cinema, trashy TV, spiralling into a YouTube vortex, or watching Rage on a Saturday morning. Video art, however, still seems to be one medium that gallery-goers often struggle with. It requires a longer attention span, often has no narrative, and the darkened rooms that house these works are sometimes easily missed on the way to the gallery café.
With this in mind, Video oediV is one exhibition that you’ll be glad you devoted the extra time and attention to. Curated by Megan Monte, it’s an exhibition entirely comprised of video art, with works ranging from a few minutes to an hour and a half long.
It features new and commissioned works by fifteen Australian and international artists, all of who are female. Though feminism isn’t the crux of the show, there’s more than one work that leaves you with a sense of perverseness as a spectator, referencing the male gaze and exploring feminist and queer identities on screen.
The different ways the video works are displayed makes the show feel part installation, part sculpture, part interactive. There are huge projections, as you would expect to see when viewing video art. But there’s also a tiny iPad screen showing the work of Anne Hirsch, tucked away in an intimate corner that you can interact with. Then there are scrolling projections by Giselle Stanborough that circle all around you while you’re standing in an enclosed room, and there are bright blue banana chairs inviting you to sit back and relax while watching the work of Hissy Fit.
If you can dedicate ten hours to ‘Making a Murderer’, you can definitely spend some time with one of contemporary art’s most interesting and rapidly evolving mediums.
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