John Gillies - Artist in Residence 1994 by Queensland College of Art, Griffith University

To be officially opened-by:- _ D_t;_ Nicholas ZufoF.!ilgg, Senior. Lectur�r, School�ltural OM Hi�ricol==-S!!;!dies,,:Eaculty of ]:lumoni�es,-=c;ri.ffith--University.

Wecfnesday 13 April�1994 at6.00 pm for6.30 pm -

Exhibition Date�: l l - 29 April 1994 Galle!¥ Ho.ors:: Mond<fyfafriday

_llileensland CQ.llege_of Art, Gri 1th Artworks- and the Faculty--o _ 1 , Uni�rsity, invitfJil-u ancfy,Q1IT friends to the presentation of _g_ new video insta:l.latio. l<Kim to�.oi:. · AFJEaci.a b.y John Gillies, 4ffist-in-Residence, Griffith Univenity. The exhibffi by appointffiehl (07J 395-2.u&� :-.:.= l =-=:;:;:::.- tj;lfo.. Q 9eilSl · C_jlege of Art Gallery, Clearview Terraee, Nlornings}:ae. Th�

To be officially opened-by:- _ D_t;_ Nicholas ZufoF.!ilgg, Senior. Lectur�r, School�ltural OM Hi�ricol==-S!!;!dies,,:Eaculty of ]:lumoni�es,-=c;ri.ffith--University.

Wecfnesday 13 April�1994 at6.00 pm for6.30 pm -

Exhibition Date�: l l - 29 April 1994 Galle!¥ Ho.ors:: Mond<fyfafriday

riffith artworks

Artists working with new technologies

In 1994 Griffith Artworks will be focussing its public programmes and services around the Griffith University Art Collection. Through a variety of exhibitions, and public art projects as well as performance and artist-in-residence activities, Artworks will create opportunities for creative interaction with the University's exciting and unique collection of contemporary Australian art. Videomaker and performance artist John Gillies will begin a nine-week residency on 21 February, 1994. The residency will be co-hosted by Griffith Artworks, the Queensland College of Art and the Faculty of Humanities, Film and Media School. John will stay in the University Residencies (Nathan) and during his residency he will complete several short video/performance works using the University's video , sound and computer imaging facilities. An exhibition of John's work will be held at the QCA Gallery, opening on Thursday 14 April. John will also have direct contact with students and staff in the In termedia courses at the QCA, Music Technology at the QCM, Media courses in the Faculty of Humanities, and the Centre for Multimedia Research and Development. He will also conduct screenings/workshops/seminars on his work. ( for more information on john and his work see article by Curator Beth Jackson on 'Techno/Dum b/Show' ) Following hot on John Gillies trail will be Film-maker Geoff Weary. Geoff's eight-week residency is planned for May/June and will be co-hosted by the Faculty of Humanities and Griffith Artworks. Geoff will also stay in the University Residencies (Nathan) and will work out of both the Faculty of Humanities Film and Media studios, and the Griffith Artworks Artist studio. Geoff will work closely with students and staff from Media studies, Faculty of Humanities to produce a single channel version of a multi-channel experimental video work for screening in a cinematic environment. There will be a major public screening of Geoff's work. John and Geoff are both artists working with new technology and they are keen to interact with students and staff from the University throughout their residencies. If you have an interest in new technology and would like to meet and work with these visiting artists please contact Griffith

/ I

·rttu1,ru7-uu1,1n7-�nu w Techno/Dumb/Show is a video artwork made in 1991 by Sydney artist John Gillies in collaboration with "The Sydney Front", an experimental theatre group. The artwork is held in the Griffith University Art Collection and will be screening during Orientation Week.

presence. This is because the camera is not used as a tool of surveil1ance or voyeurism where the artist/film maker surveys and manipulates the actor/pawns in a constructed narrative. Rather, the actors themselves utilise the camera to study and locate themselves.

The video was made on an improvisatory basis over three months, where GiJlies, as director, was not so concerned to exercise tight control over the content and shape of the work. The individual performers were able to direct themselves and capture some of the more improvisatory and emotional aspects of their performances.

Technoldumb/show creates a highly sensuous and thought-provoking audio visual architecture where the spectator encounters a whole array of different theatrical gestures and . . mtense emotions. Techno/Dumb/Show is an example of the rich creative possibilities for collaborative work and intermedia artforms.

The collaboration has created an intense dialogue between theatre and film, the body and technology. Bodily gesture and facial expression are retained as central metaphors of the material without an accompanying expressionism or romanticism. Similarly, technology is rescued from notions of dehumanisation and instead enables a study of bodily gesture and

16. RSH ORII WHRT IT IS

feb \5;4-.

Beth Jackson Curator, Griffith Artworks. A still from the video "'Techno Dumb Show "' 1991, by John Gillies and the Sydney Front, held in the Griffith University Art Collection.

Sydney video artist John Gillies discusses his most recent installation Armada, prepared during

his residency at Griffith Artworks, Griffith University in March and April, 1994. Armada was installed at the Queensland College of Art Callery from 11-29 April.

orchestrating armada

john gilles

interv.ewed by nicholas zurbrugg

Nicholas Zurbrugg To begin with, why did you call this

through history brought terrible consequences-

installation Armada?

like memory-and books and writing.

momentous consequences.

So there's an lmpllcit human presence.

John Gilles I was trying to make these images of

13 this a new thematics compared with your earl/er work

the First Fleet seem strange and menacing. You kn ow, if one calls the First Flee t the 'First Armada' it has totally different connotations. u�s

Techno-Dumb-Show?

a cultural thing. If your first language is Spanish the n there's some thing quite neutral about this

absent. It's trying to suggest th e presenceof peo ple without actually showing them. I had planned

Yes-all kinds of human presenc e . It's n ot explicit. At the beginning of the piece there's a shot of a kind of terrain In which I seemed to SH the outline of a skull. Was that coincidental?

term, where as if y ou grow up in the context of

to use cut-away shots of people's faces turning

It's different. Like Techno-Dumb-Show it's con cerned with the body, but in Armada the body is

Yes. But ii those images are working they're like ink- blots-the y're so e soteric and cryptic that

English history it's not neutral. I was trying to

around to lo ok al some thing-we don't know

they're throwing up their own possibilities and

take that image and make it something that one

what-but I cut that out. l tried to conjure up

sees for the first time-something really menac

their presence without actually showing the m, by

ing as the image of the boat must have been for the people who first saw it coming here--almost

using the sound of people or the things th ey inscribe, like walls which are made by people and

conjuring up all sorts of imagery. Were you consciously trying to use rather evocative fragments? Did you /Ind it difficult, for example, to

like a UFO coming from anoth er plan e t. Something quite aw e-inspiring that we know

carved out of people's marks, cloth that's worn by people, and video-tape which is woven-ag-ain,

eyel l n e 25

spring

1994

decide to use a particular section of wall? Yes-I've got miles ol it. I've used ttlre e, four or five different pieces throughout the sequence.

The images were done first, and then we con structed the sound-track last Saturda) ' using the Con.servatonum's computer system.

Are you happy with the sound-track? I'd like to re-work it. You really need to hear it back ma big space like the College of Art Calle!\' to hear what the outer limits are. I'd like to go back and re-mix it slightly and add some things tolt. Armada's rapid sequences of Images and sounds seem

to have something of the percussive visual and sonic quality of Anthony Batch, Wiltram Burroughs and Brion Gysln's II/ms Towers Open Fire and The Cut-Ups. Yes. The work that I do-like that of a lot of peo ple, perhaps-is post-cut•up in a Sen5e,

How do you /eel your work differs from these early cut up II/ms? It's more eclectic in its language, and I'm not afraid of using quhe conventional shot structures sometimes. In T,c/1110-0unrl>-Slww there are a cou ple of scenes that are constructed like classic nar rative cinema. I use any device that's appropriate.

Whit was your principle for selecting such images?

Yes, but it's not in English. I didn't specifically

Whereas in the cut-up work I thislk they were try

Were you working Intuitively?

want people to read it, which is why these images

ing to develop a new kind of language that ,vas

Yes-they were selected fairly intuitively in terms

are moving so fast. It's also another form of mark

very very specific. And they did so.

of the ways they would combine with other s«

that human beings have mad...-the ships brought

The railway sequences In Armada sHm lo typify your

tions. Although there were a couple of sections at

books and they have a certain kind of power

use of what one might t/!lnk of as samplings of 'older'

the beginning that are quite recognisable even if a

they're memory systems.

cinematic language. How were these sequences put

bit fuz.zy-they're particular walls in Barcelona

So the whole lnstallar/on Is about time, inscription,

together and how did you envisage their function?

th•t people were shot •goinst.

power and memory?

It's not old footage, it just looks like old

So you're looking at the resonance of objects and mate

Yes. The screen upon which the piece is projected

footage-it's just the way I've shot it. The sound

rials, as opposed to the kind of close-ups of individual

is, the installation is actually made of sail-doth, so

of the train there was actually mixed with a con temporary train as well because I didn't want to

people used In Tech no-Dumb-Show?

that it's projected upon a sail-although that's not

Yes, that's what I'm trying to do. I was also using

totally obvious-which is another kind of wall.

push it all into the past. It was above all a refer

images of short-wave radio signals to try to evoke

To some extent Armada m1ku me think , bit of Michie/

ence to the industrial revolution, clocks and the

a spoce where human voices exist.

Snow's Wavtltngth in tht ttnH that Wavelength also

regimentation of time. On one level, the reason

Tbert also SHm to be s.quencos of something a bit Uko

combines the ,xpertenc, of looking at , nautJcal Image

Europeans came to Australia was because of the

electronic interforenca-were these radio signals roo?

and looking at a wall-although obviously using colour.

industrial revolution-because of all the changes that it brought about. And the method by which

In those sections I was trying as it were to grind

I think Wautltngtlr is really amazislg-for me it's

into the image to find something _to suggest

one of the key filmic works. Spielberg has said

the English State was able to colonise the world

sound grinding through the videotape-rather

that as well.

was through clocks-they were able lo measure

like grinding into a wall or something like that.

Although you're obviou,ly doing something very di/fer

That's the reason for that image of the video

.,,, in remis of the evocative qualiy ol the p;ec.·s vari

world. The dominance of time was their basic

scraping backwards and forwards, then breaking

ous Inscriptions and perllaps In terms of the austerity of

technology.

apart.

the Images of ships which almost seem lo touch but

In a way, the train sequence romin� me a bit of an old

What was the function of the Images of pages from the

Mver quite do so. Did you begin by making the lnsratta

Ea/Ing Studios comedy-The Ladyklllers-in which a

Bible? Were these evoking textual signals and the print•

tlon's Image-track or its sound-track, or did you produce

gang of incompetent crooks end up kllllng one another.

ed voice?

both at the same time?

Ev,ry tiiM a train is heard to go by their house It sign/-

eyel

n e

spring

1994

time by Greenwich mean time anywhere in the

And the industrial revolution machine. The Un10n Jack turns into an infernal machine-tht>

kind of thing Blake might have written about.

The dominance of time seemed to me lo be a par ticularly Protestant thing.

spent hair a dav in •

Brisbane clock.shop shooting the image of a clock that turns mto this kind of machine, and it turned

out that all the people who worked there wore

evangelical Christians sending missionaries to

Fiji-which confirmed my theories about that whole technology and also the way in which, in

places like Australia, old people have this obses sion with keeping all their clocks running on

time. It's the thing that holds their subjectivity in place and stops them from cracking up.

Is Armada in any way an aurablographlcal piece?

Well most pieces are, but it's not that impor

tant-if they're only autobiographical, then

don't think they're very interesting. You work

from your own experience, but if the audience

thinks that you're only working out $0mething

that's your own, they get bored very very

quickly.

So In a sense you prefer ta a/fer I/le audience sam� thing mare general la chew on?

Yes-that's what I'm trying to do here.

In other wards you're bringing tog,ther cert,tn rather

mythological or tlmeteu images and evocations, and

certain quite specific kinds al ralerences?

Yes-it is about something quite specific-the

forces of colonisation, and the transition or one

culture over another, one cultural form over

another-although in a sense the people are all absent in it.

Why are they abHnt, would you say?

I guess because the

are in it.

audience are the people thot

Sa yau'rt really confronting the audience wflh the

forcu which impinge upon l/lem and which impinged upon previous general/ans? Yes-it places the audience in the centre, rather than representing people on the screen. But that's

a tricky strategy, and it's too soon to know yet

nes that another body is about to be drop�d over , bridge, onto passing trvck3.

That's interesting, because in Armada each time the train �uence happens, • murder has in fact eyel i n e 25

spring

1994

taken place. Both industrialization and cotonial

whether Am"2da really succeeds.

ization imply a murder-literally.

So the Image al /he Union Jack ,pinning round repre unts I/le colon/a/ machine?

�as .Z� i-. Senior Lecturer in Ute,ra,y $tudiff � tM SchOol of Cl.lltu,tt � Hl1torical Studi••• Orittlth Univenlty.

Griffith AnworK:> r15

..._/

J.1!111, u.H dvl.U ,....,,.l.i,, '-'�••'-'~- -··· ·liter.ary professor who is ob-

. 0�n.:a1c1 h ,,

ation of Tom

CotA�ev-- �, \,, . 2..\ � A-pr,·\J

action ahead.

f3 \ .

Future forms .

,..._/

JOHN GILLIES: Armada video in•

.-.tallatlon. Queensland College of Art Gallery, Clearvlew Tee. Morning• . · sldr, until April 29.

t3y SUE SMITH

dr l cr1t1c

•

HEN ihf' history or the • 20th century- is w ri t t en. film. video and comput• t>rs a re likely to e m e r ge as the era's most powerful artlsttc/com• muntcatton med.Ja - far outstrip ping th� Influence of tradl_tlonal art forms such as painting and sculptur(.'. Whether or not this means paint•

and Intense style makes up for a lack of conve.ntlonal narrative or storytelllng. Glllles' videos sometimes offer r('• minders of early German t-xpres� · stonlst cinem a. with Jots or eerie. stark Imagery, quJck scene cuts and montaged double.Image techniques. The experience or watching GIi• lies' videos Is akJn to viewing a series of unrelated segments from main• strean:i films. confusingly spllced together. Perhaps because o( ·the lack or a plo t. some viewer s may find the videos emotlonalJy unlnvolvlng and. unsatlsfyingly unresol _ved.

Audiences may also find these he_avtly symbol ic works lncom•

prehenslble· without readlng the ac• companying catalogue/explanatory tually become mar ginalised as a notes. kind of quaint folk art - nostalgic Tcchno-Dumb-ShowL"i an emotlvf>, expressions belonging·to the planet's menacing work with actors grimac· pre.-electronlc past - remains to be Ing ln front or_the camera. It and Ar• seen but _there ls no doubt video and mada both have driving•. percussive other types of electronic mPdla are y_ GUIies) soundtracks (creat Increasingly becoming thf.' art or , which help to keep the Heo moving · choice fo r today's artb,ts. along. . . :\.·. ,.:. - A g l i m p se Into t h e f u t u r e of . Armadats ·ae-omplexplece whlch. technoart ls being provided by the In essence, sum·mons up feeilngs College of Art, which Is presenting about memory loss and the Euro:. two �0-mlnute video works. -Armada - pean exploration and colonisation of · · and Tecbno-Dumb-Show by John Austral ia • . Glllles. lt Is Interesting on several levels . Gillies Is originally a Queensl�n• · and has some good moments - espe- · der w�o grew up on a farm on the clally· the sc:enes of ghostly tall ships. Darling Downs and ls now a Sydney and a marvellous montage lrivolvtng: based artist ·and musician whose a clock. Unio·n Jack· arid" tartan scarf video Techno-Dumb-Show recently � but·there are too many repetitive· won first prize In the video Braztl · shots of ancient walls and Doors (all International Festival.. deeply meaningful but v:ery boring). Both· videos are likely to appeal . On the evidence of Armada and. mainly to viewers withta special In Techno-Dumb-Show. Glllles appears to be an o bsessive expeltmenter. terest In new. cerebra(and experi whose admJrers (a small cult In thls mental art. Others may' find the ex- · country and on the International art. . pertence of viewing them tedious \'tdeo circuit) perhaps feel hls dark and too much like hard work.

Ing and sculpture practice will even

l· l·

n 's

ld ir

al .h Ln n-

"A GRANDLY ROMANTIC·:_ -.. SPECTACULAR EPIC MOVIE" Peter Thompson, SUNDAY·

· t NOW· . SCREENil

GRIFFITH ARTWORKS G RIFFITH

U NIV E R SIT Y

Exhibitions • Performances • Residencies • Access Studios A collection of contemporary Australian art which includes photography, video and electronic media-based art works. A residen.cy program which hos hosted multi-media

artists Rose Farrell and George Parkin, John Gillies, Geoff Weary and Warren Burt. > .,,:; >-

-0

C 0 ,:;

"' ., 0

·;;

_Conhr-iuurr.Vo\. 91 >lo .11 l994-

Griffith Artworks, Griffith University, Nathan Campus, QLD 41 l l Director: Dr Morgriet Bonnin Phone: (07)875 7414 Fax: (07) 875 7932 491

� "'

NORTHSIDE CHRONICI (Brisbane Suburba� 13 April 1994 page no. 1,1

Community billboard Lunch series

GRIFFITH Art wo free Lunchtime rk's for mance Seri Per es in cludes: April 13, cham ber music for woodwind at the Nath an· camp _ us, cen tral theatr1:s from 12 no to ·lP�.'and Apri on l 20: Techno/Dumb/S how (video screeni ng talk)_ at Natpan and cam pus. cen tral the atres from noo n-lpm.

ARTS using the University's video, sound and computer Griffith Anworks 1994 free imaging facilities. An exhi performance programme bition of John's work will will commence Wednes- be held at the QCA day lu nchtimes on the Gallery. opening on Nathan campus from mid Thursday 14 April. John March. The programme will have direct contact will also extend to the with students and staff in Mt.Gravatt i�d QCA cam- the Intermedia courses at Music puses. Free5programmes the QCA, will be available from the Technology at the QCM, Griffith Art�olh office in M edia courses in the o\. early March. ·• '"', :· Faculty of Humanities, and Contact Chrii''sayer on will also conduct screen extension 875 75lf6Jor ings(wRrkshops/seminars further infonnation. · ·:& ·. . on his wor�

Griffith Artworks

--,---,-�--=,--�-----,#r Artist in Residence

Canr,fE1iehris Sayer on ·"". eitenslqn' 875 7586 for 21 February-22 April{" ''':fli""'Jrf/ther;"information. John Gillies .'�' . ,�; QP�t@;'.:Afu-, Griffith Amvorks ,,j1!' �r·Exhibitiori t,L Queensland College of�'1:l;fL;<: '1 l .. . ·

�t-'-,

John Gillies. is«:�Sy,tney:' 24 F�hrua, �3.:_� �f based v idebnrakei'"andt OJlicta�Ol't!fU"'8' :� musician who will.co�duct�: l9J.3 Artist�e-Drawmg a nine week residency)1t ·-Pnze,.¥,,,_etY Griffith Universi'ty. During Exhibition continues until his residency John\will 2.S•March. complete several sli.<>p video/performance �orls

GIUFFTl'H GAZETTE

DIARY Until 25 February

QCM Gardens Point Campus

Graphite, charcoal, conte and pastel on rag paper.

23 February (1.05pm) Free lunch hour concert Adrian McEnlery- tenor Leanne Kenneally - soprano Diane Selmon - piano

Selected Works on Paper by David Allan Seiben Contact Marlene Hall on 395 9161 for further infor mation.

QCM

Mackay Campus 18 February (8.00pm) Concert: Leanne Keneally, soprano Adrian Mc Eneiry, tenor Kath ryn Courtne3/, piano

These young postgraduates have made a remarkable impact professionally. Adrian McEneiry was one of the soloists in the Brisbane Biennial Festival production Billy Budd and Leanne Keneally has taken roles in Brisbane opera 'productions. Kathryn is an accomplished repetiteur. Contact (079) 572 497 for

A concert of French Art Song. 2 March (1.05pm) Free lunch hour concert Kylie Redman - clarinet

S March (6.30pm) Australia Played

A concert of m u sic by Australian composers. by Presented the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra. Contact 844 5599.

sofo

9 March (1.05pm) Free lunch hour concert Tarita Botsmari - soprano Jodie Schloss - piano

further infonnarion.

16 March (1.05pm) Free lunch hour concert Jazz Department Contact (07) 875 6222.

fe'o Vo\ �, N<? I

�'(C,h Vo\ 9 1 N °- 2. Apvi\ Vo\,, N� 3

Griffith Artworks continues its lead in contemporary art An Acquisition Grant of $50,000, given recently by the Visual Arts/Craft Board under the Collections Development Program, will allow Griffith Artw orks to continue its lead In the development of exciting and accessible collections of con temporary art.

The grant is the largest of its kind ever made in Australia. "There are no major Collections specialising i n

r�

.;.1�r··

"Griffith University is in a unique position to establish a video, electronic and ephemeral art collection through its con temporaty art collection, its media studios, courses in media production and analysis, and ils student audience of ·artists, music technologists and multi media specialists," she said. "Historically also we are in an excellent position as our very first artist-in-residence in 1976 Techno-Dumb-Show, a work by visiti11g artist John Gillies. practised in the areas of video and electronic performance/installa University students and staff. with video that there are extremely Mr Gillies' video: works have limited opportunities to exhibit their tion. One of these, David Perry, is considered a pioneer in Australian screened al festivals throughout the work in high-quality gallery condi video art." world and in 1992 his video collabo tions and tJ1ere are far fewer opportu Late last month Australian ration with the Australian perfor nities for acquisition of their work into Videomaker and Musician, John mance group 'The Sydney Front' significant collections, public or pri Gillies, began a nine-week residency received First Prize at the international vate. at Griffith funded by the Australia Video Brasil festival. "A high-profile-, well-es1ablished An exhibition of Mr Gillies work institution such as Griffith University Council and co-hosted by Griffith Artworks and Griffith's Queensland will be held at the QCA Gallery from with a long history of involvement in College of Art. Wednesday 13 April. cullural, media and screen studies, Nat ional Co-ordinator o f New production and criticism, is un excel Mr Gillies will complete a new video work using the University's Image Research at the Australian Film lent site for the establishment and video, sound and computer imaging Commission, Gary Warner, said that it maintenance of Australia's first video facilities, exhibit and screen his work, is a continuing frustration and disin art collec1ion of seriousness and sig give public lectures, and work with centive 10 Australian artists working nificance." murders and a suicide in a base station on futuristic earth. "Terrain is more like the thoughtful Inspector Morse tele vision mystery series than :shoot-

acquiring works i n video art and this grant will fund the purchase of a major body of vicleo art for the Griffith University Art Collection. This collection would be accompanied by selected supporting artworks produced in photography and electronic-based media such as computer-generated imagery, interactive works and installa tions," Director of Griffith Artworks, Dr Margriet Bonnin, said.

Students aim for international movie market

Grlrflth Uni versity Media Production students are set to make their mark on tbe movie industry In Australia and overseas w ith the

ARTS DIARY r I ••>v l t '- \. c._, 0 \lo\ 9 1 � 2-.

l !

I',·

Free lunchtime performances Griffith Artworks' has extended its free Lunchtime Performance Series in 1994 to the Mt Gravatt and Queensland College of Art campuses of Griffith University and the public, staff and students are welcome.

A total of twelve performances will be staged over the three campuses during first semester and a similar programme is planned for second semester. The Nathan campus kicks off the series with a concert by blues gui tarist Phil Manning at the Undercroft on March 23 and continues throughout semester (Wednesday lunchtimes from 12.00-1.00pm) with a piano recital by Shan Deng, a screening & talk by resident video artist & musician-in-residence John Gillies, acappella group Sister Moon, Melbourne based improvisation duo Brigid Burke & Robert Zocchi. chamber music for woodwinds and a concert of classical guitar music. The programme commences at the QCA campus on March 16 and runs in co operation with the QCA Yox Popili lecture series. Video artist & musician-in-residence John Gillies will give a seminar on contemporary and traditional perfor mance in Barcelona, Spain. On March 30 there will be a 'The of perfor mance Museum of Accidents' by the Virginia Baxter and Keith Ga!lasch - members of the Sydney based perfor mance group Open City who will soon be resident artists on the Gold Coast campus. The Mt Gravatt programme will be staged from 12.00-1.00pm Wednesdays in the Ans and Music building Mt Gravatt campus. The programme commences on May 18 with a performance by world renowned shakuhachi player Riley Lee. Riley is one of the few non-Japanese shakuhachi musicians to have attained the rank of dai shihan (grand master). ,.....ift Mt Gravatt audiences will also __,,,,.,.enjoy a piano recital b y Queensland Conservatorium student Vicki Hong on May 25. The Griffith University Office of Community Services subsides the lunchtime perfonnance programme. First semester programmes are now available from Griffith Artworks (Nathan), QCA Gallery (QCA campus) and the Music department (Mt Gravatt campus).

March 15, 1994

Gr\ fDt� Ga.z.eite.

Mo.'reh

Vo\

,9 1 N ° 2.

�riffith artworks

Artists working with new technologies

In 1994 Griffith Artworks will be focussing its public programmes and services around the Griffith University Art Collection. Through a variety of exhibitions, and public art projects as well as performance and artist-in-residence activities, Artworks will create opportunities for creative interaction with the University's exciting and unique collection of contemporary Australian art. Videomaker and performance artist John Gillies will begin a nine-week residency on 21 February, 1994. The residency will be co-hosted by Griffith Artworks, the Queensland College of Art and the Faculty of Humanities, Film and Media School. John will stay in the University Residencies (Nathan) and during his residency he will complete several short video/performance works using the University's video , sound ·and computer imaging facilities. An exhibition of John's work will be held at the QCA Gallery, opening on Thursday 14 April. John will also have direct contact with students and staff in the Intermedia courses at the QCA, Music l:echnology at the QCM, Media courses in the Faculty of Humanities, and the Centre for Multimedia Research and Development. He will also conduct screenings/workshops/seminars on his work. ( for more information on John and his work sec article by Curator Beth Jackson on 'Techno/Dumb/Show' ) Following hot on John Gillies trail will be Film-maker Geoff Weary. Geoff's eight-week residency is planned for May/June and will be co-hosted by the Faculty of Humanities and Griffith Artworks. Geoff will also stay in the University Residencies (Nathan) and will wprk out of both the Facully of Humanities Film and Media studios, and the Griffith Artworks Artist studio. Geoff will work closely with students and staff from Media studies, Faculty of Humanities to produce a single channel version of a multi-channel experimental video work for screening in a cinematic environment. There will be a major public screening of Geoff's work. John and Geoff are both artists working with new te chnology and they are keen to interact with students and staff from the University throughout their residencies. If you have an interest in new technology and would like to meet and work with these visiting artists please contact Griffith Artworks on ext. 875 7414 for more details.

TECHNO /DUMB/SHOW-

Teclmo/Dumb/Show is a video artwork made in 1991 by Sydney artist John Gillies in collaboration with "The Sydney Front", an experimental theatre group. The artwork is held in the Griffith Universi ty Art Collection and will be screening during Orientation Week.

presence. This is because the camera is not used as a tool of surveillance or voyeurism where the artist/film maker surveys and manipulates the actor/pawns in a constructed narrative. Rather, the actors themselves utilise the camera to study and locate themselves.

The video was made on an improvisatory basis over three months, where Gillies, as director, was not so concerned to exercise tight control over the content and shape of the work. The individual performers were able to direct themselves and capture some of the more improvisatory and emotional aspects of their performances.

Techno/dumblshow creates a highly sensuous and

16. RSH DIOO llHRIIT IS

felo 15;4-.

thought-provoking audio visual architecture where the spectator encounters a whole array of different theatrical gestures and intense emotions. Techno/Dumb/Show is an example of the rich creative possibilities for collaborative work and intermedia artforms. Beth Jackson Curator, Griffith Artworks.

A still from the video •Techno Dumb Show• 1991, by John Gillies and the Sydney Front, held in the Griffith University Art Collection.

•

1994-

In 1994 Griffith Artworks will be focussing its public programs and services around the Griffith University Art Collection. Through a variety of exhibition, and public art projects as well as performance and artist-in-residence activities, Artworks will create opportunities for creative interaction with the University's exciting and unique collection of contemporary Australian art.

You may wish to become involved with or utilise any of the following programs/services: •

24 hour a day access to etching and lithography studios, a photographic darkroom, and a Yamaha grarid piano.

•

Residency activities such as screenings, social functions, guest lectures and seminars. 1994 resident artists will be videomaker and performance artist John Gillies and artist/filmmaker Geoff Weary.

•

Free lunchtime Concert and Performance program.

•

Exhibition openings, corridor exhibition educational talks, tours of the 30 exhibitions on display throughout the University (available by appointment).

•

Access to the Art Colle�tion catalogue and artist files for research projects.

•

Opportunities for training (through voluntary involvement) in arts administration, conservation, curatorship, and gallery education work.

•

Opportunities to be personally involved in the development of the Griffith Un\versity Art Gallery.

Griffith Artworks will no longer offer a program of Arts Workshops In 1994.

The staff of Griffith Artworks would like to sincerely thank those who have supported the Arts Workshop program over the past fifteen years, through attending as workshop participants, working as tutors, or contributing with sponsorship or specialist advice. Thank you one and all !!!!!!!

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CALL \

874 7414

FAX

875 7932

t\tt\th Artworlts,

.ester 1, 1994

Free

Lunchtime Performance I I Series March

16 Wed

Dieiei§Jiitfd.Jiiid;@@ii,41%/ijj$i@HM3

A Seminar about contemporary & traditional performance, Barcelona, Spain. OCA campus. 1.00-2.00pm. Cen tral Theatre QCA.

23 Wed Phil Manning Blues Guitarist Nathan campus,

Extraordinalre. 12.00·1.00pm, Undercroft.

30 Wed

ii,@i(•H@iu••)iJ@ijt§,Jf11

A performance work by Open City, Virginia Baxter & Keith Gallasch. OCA campus. 1.00-2.00pm. OCA Gallery.

30 Wed

@1•••i-liij@■NU•1if •1§•JJI

Nath�n campus, 12.00 1.00pm. Queensland Conservatorium of Music student. Ce n tral Theatres 2

I I

J\pril 13 Wed

A•\•111\•ffl•IGMQM¥,Ad

Queensland Conservatorium of Nathan campus. 12.00·1.00pm. Music students. Central Theatres 2

2OWed John Gillies, Artist-in-Residence, Griffith University Natha n campus. 12.00-1.00pm. Cen tral Theatres 2

27Wed Brilliant acappella music.

Nathan campus. 12.00·1.00pm, Central Theatres 2

New composition, . � 3Tues Sounds & Visions improvisation, theatre Brigid Burke & Robert Zocchl & visual art Nathan campus. 12.00-1.00pm. Central Theatres 2

11 Wed

••

Glt•f11i-i§i4(•M(it-iJ1Ji,hJ,j,i.fij.j.j.4

Queensland Conservatorium of Music students. Nathan campus. 12.00·1.00pm. Central Theatres 2

;J1@ 84i

Ht �ravatt campus • ■ Traditional Japanese shakuhachi 12,00·1.00pm. Arts & Music, Rm 1129 performance

18 Wed ■

25 Wed

IJuneI

;RIFFITH UNIVERSITY ltEPAillNG YOU FOil A BETTER Fl!TlJRF, e Griffith University Offlce of Community Services has provided a subsidy this Potformonce setlos OCA petfarmonces In co·opetatlan with the OCA x Popltl Serles • Theso performers hove received assistance from the

mmonwcalth Government through the Australia Council

0 Austrnlla ��.nclt ,_

61-i,l·liiMM•dffiUiieMii·I

g��irium Mt Gravatt campus. 12.00-1.00pm. of Music student. Arts & Music. Rm 1129

1 Wedli\t·�{10·(@ju.;.

Solo and ensemble performances, Queensland Conservatorium of Music students. Nathan campus, 12.00·1.00pm. Central Th�tres 2

'A L

W E

L C O M E

GRIFFITH ARTWORKS/QUEENSLAND COLLEGE OF ART 21 FEBRUARY-22 APRIL Artist-in-Residence John Gillies John Gillies is a Sydney based videomaker and musician who will conduct a nine week residency at Griffith University. During his residency John will complete several short video/performance works using the University's video, sound and computer imaging facilities. An exhibition of John's work will be held at the QCA Gallery, opening on Thursday 14 April. John will have direct contact with students and staff in the Intermedia courses at the QCA, Music Technology at the QCM, Media courses in the Faculty of Humanities, and will also conduct screenings/workshops/seminars on his work. For further information contact: Chris Sayer: 875 7586 or Marlene Hall: 395 9161 GRIFFITH ARTWORKS 1994 FREE PERFORMANCE PROGRAM will commence Wednesday lunchtimes on the Nathan campus from mid March. The program will also extend to the Mt.Gravatt and QCA campuses. Free programs will be available from the Griffith Artworks office (Nathan campus) early March. For further information contact Chris Sayer: 875 7586

Diary a monthly What's On column featuring University arts e Griffith Gazette (Arts University's fortnightly bulletin, and Gravity the student . acti\'iti es),NOTA the , newspaper.

Sponsorship · .. . . . . · . . Griffith Artworks' staff bmlt on the expenence they had gamed througl) developmg relationships with sponsors during 1992. During 1993 Artworks' programmes received sponsorship support from the Queensland Government through the Minister for the Arts, the Australia Council, the Queensland Art Gallery, Tennyson Group, Consolidated Paper . Industries (Qld) Pty.Ltd., Artistcare, Calypso Colour, Ansett Australia, Kodak, and LegoDacta. Grants · Regional Galleries Association of Qld. grant wa:s provided for the development of the "Interfaces" exhibition ($2,000). Qld. G9vernµ-ient grants w_ere provided for the Arts Workshop Program ($18,500), and for touring·the "Interfaces" Exhibition ($13,819).- · Australia Council funds were provided for a Musician-in-Residence ($6,580), a Writer in�Ifosidence ($7,066), the "Holistic Environment" Project ($5,667), and for Art Collection Development in the area of video and electronic arts ($50,000). Grants for 1994 include and Australia Council video residency ($10,440) and a film residency from · · · the Australian Film Commission ($15,000). ·

FUTURE PROJECTS . Artist-in-Residence - · Funding from the Visuai Arts and Craft Board has been received for a nine-wyek· · residency by interrnedia artist John Gillies. The residency will commence on 21 February 1994 and will be co-hosted by Griffith artworks and the Queensland College of Art. During the residency John will complete several short .video/performance works using the . University's video, sound and computer imaging facilities: An exhibition of John's work will·be held at the QCA Gallery. John will also have direct contact with students and staff · . in the Intermedia courses at the QCA, Music Technology and Experimental Music at QCM, Media courses in the Faculty of Humanities, and the Centre for Multimedia · · · Research and Development Film-maker-in-Residence Griffith Artworks,' ha� received approval for funding support from the Australian Film Commission towards an eight-week Filmmaket-in-Residence project. During the proposed residency, pl�nned for May-June 1994 artist/filmmaker Geoff Weary will work closely with students and staff from Media studies , Faculty of Humanities to produce a single channel version of a multi-channel experimental video v.rork for s�reening in a· cinematic environment. Touring Art and Technologv Exhibition·. Following a �uccessful funding application t9 Arts Queensland, the exhibition .. 'Interfaces:Art and Technology' along :with a pr.ogramme of ancillary events will tour regional Queensland. throughout 1994 and 1995. _The exhibition . has been curated from the Griffith University Art Collection and ·will open May, 1994 .. on the Gold--Coast campus of Griffith University. It will commence its regional tour in Western Queensland and wiHthen travel to Mt Isa for the Mt Isa Arts Festival in September, 1994. ·

I . I

Aboriginal Activities· -. . . Aboriginal writer/composer/performer Kev Cannody approached Griffith Artworks late . • · 19.93 with an interest to developing a relationship with Griffith University. Griffith ·· ·Artworks and local arts organisation Feral Arts co-hosted a luncheon to enable Kev to . meet and interact with a wide variety of University_ staff. The luncheon was very successful with representatives from the Faculties of Law _, ENS, Humanities, Education, . HBS, the Queensland College of Art and the Queensland Conservatorium of Music,

':i J

.·•;

�·

jj ,; .: I'.· •

Jj;r:H�t.·

�

)

JOHN

GILLIES

Born 1960 lives and works in Sydney 1980 1981 1982 1983

1984 19&5

Performz,nces at Queensland Film and Drama Centre Video at Watters Gallery,Sydney Performances at Art/Empire/Industry and Watters Galler/ ,Sydney Member of Great White Niose Performance at Roslyn Oxley 9 Gall-ar; ,S ydney Hymn video installation at Roslyn Oxley 9 GallerJ, .Sydney Perforrnances with Michael Tinney at The I.M.A. and La Bolte Theatre Recording with Jon Rose and Michael Tinney Performance at the Sydney Trade Union Club Music at Performance Space.Sydney r '1 Need You {video) at Roslyn Oxley 9 Gallery,S ydney

\ \

�- . ��::' • •1

�y··.;: i� :�: ::) '/! �

:I II i

ecting i.n.;nany ways how these �lder. cultures have combined to produet? the multicultural entity of modern Australia. His method of presentation resembles the piling of one image on another in a rapid, relentless and highly rhythmic flow. One writer has compared the effect to 'a street directory without an ind ex, or an encydopedia out of alphabetical order'. 'Australian displays of his video arl include the 'Style' multi-screen laserdisc installation currently on show at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, a computer-graphic logo for the Powerhouse and 'If Pigs Could F1y ('The Media Machine)', another laserdisc installation commissioned by the Australian Bicentennial Authority, which won first prize in the 3rd Australian Video Festival in 1988. He has just completed a poster for the coming Adelaide Festival and will produce a video for display at the Festival. "I'm what you could call ·non commercial=, he explains. "I work outside the industry, but I accept commissions. In March I finished a commission for the Musewn of Contemporary Art which will shortly open in Sydney." The majority of Callas' work is shown overseas, in art galleries, on television and in the hundreds of video festivals which take place in Etrrope, Japan and North America. Over the last thre.: years, his work has appeared in an average of 50 festivals, galleries and TV programs per year. Peter Callas' installation for Perspecta is a recreation of The Fujiyama Pyramid Project' which was shown at the Longbeach Museum in California last year. Consisting ofa large pyramid, two sides of which display the Masonic pyramid (the "Great Seal') which appears on the American one dollar bill while the other sides show Mount Fuji as seen on the Japanese 5,000 yen note. TI1e top section of the pyramid contains a monitor with an animated eye containing changing in1ages while the base of the pyramid is supported by 20inch monitors which on the American side feature a Japanese 'Uc.de Sam' character while on the Japanese side is seen an aggressive American policemen in front of a wall ofred flames. Around the pyramid are another eight monitors, also showing related images. . "TI1e basic theme is the idea of the duplicity of things that are two-sided, that cau be turned from one into another�, Callas explains. "Images have _always been tied to money from time

immemorial; now, however, with the ability to transfer money via credit cards and phones, money has become divorced from the image. So we have a nostalgia for this image." The Perspecta catalogue describes the installation as 'a symbol of

PmR

CN.iAs I\T WORK IN THE PROFE$.SJONll,l

EDmNG SUITE WHERE THE FIN,',L ST/\GES Of HIS WORK AA€ P!100UC.ED.

translation/transaction between the American and Japanese cultures whose economies are in what Peter calls "tense collaboration".' "Money is still a form of cultural entr3.11ce", he adds. "TI1e first thing you do when you arrive in a new country is change your money; it's like a . triumphal arch you pass under on entry." Although he is intimately concerned with images in time, Callas p,o longer deliberately shoots moving video footage for his art works. He explains this approach as a rejection of the monocular way of viewing the world which has predominated since the

G,wES vieWS H15 WORK JN Hr5 omcr AT THE CJTY fvrr INSTTltlTE.

JOHN

Renaissance. 'Tve found that not using a camera is a liberating thing because you're not framing the world with the viewfinder", he adds. ;, "For roe, it was really im.portant to move away from the idea of the viewfi.oder and.the lens. fve always seen moving images in films and videos as paradigms for the way the mind thinks. For example, an edit is not just a change oflocation, it's also the way_ our mind works by thin.king about orie

subj€ct and suddenly changing to thinking abo�t som.�thing else. "An interesting aspect of comouter graphics is that it's almost close; to writing than to painting or film-making in the sense that if you make connections and associations very quickly (as you do when working on a typewriter), metaphors come to mind which. when you're speaking, may not. fm able to use images as ideas." Time also plays an important role in his work. "TI1e most important thing is that time is realised as part of the medium", he says; "it's not just moving pictures, there's also the structuring of time. Recently there's been a greater . awareness of structuring time, not necessarily to make it palatable, but with the result that video art has become less boring." Future directions for Peter Callas look set to include an increasing involvement with computers. Recently developed hardware and software offer potential to replace many of the editing procedures which need to be currently carried out on video. Video will, however, remain the principal means of showing his work. John Gillies Coming into video through interests in music and paintin[_and involvement in ffiiratri?.John Gillies uses video to provide tne source images for his work. A lecturer in Cinema History, Video Production, Sollnd and Sculpture at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney, Gillies prefers using more 'realistic' images. . His submission to Australian Perspecta is a 20-minute video title<l 'Techno/ Dumb/Show' produced in collaboration with the experimental theatre group, · �_gney Front. Gillies describes the piece as a -� of emotions - all the emotional states a performer can go through played as 'over the top' melodramatic gestures. "I wanted to explore how that could be represented in video without simply making a documentation of what the actors do", he explains. "TI1e videotape is different from the performance. If you just made a video ofthe performance, it would only be using half the capabilities ofvideo as a me<lium. In my videotape, a whole lot of other concerns come into play." The video was funded by the Australian Film Commission and the original footage was shot in a studio :-: over a three month period using low- ' · band U-Matic equipment. His equipment choice was dictated by accessibility and cost. "I didn't have V10EOCAMER/\

A STILL

. FROM)OHN G1wes·

VIDEO.

lEOiNO/

-:�:, �

SHOWS 'IHE

- Q'VERV,PPJNG ' OF 'IHE Vl0€0

IMAGBAND TH€

INNOI/ATTVl:

COlOURIWD

�-

CONTAAST

to worry about running out of money . ; technically distorted", Gillies explains. and having to stop shooting", he points · "I've pushed it towards over-saturation out. "I could be totally indulgent and ::. - to achieve the effect I want. I'm trying ·shoot as much as I liked. We actually · · to replicate the effect of the old film :shot 20 hours of rushes for a 20-minute · stock Qf 50 or 60 years ago wITFl the . tape. If I'd shot that on Betacarn, it b1urry reds ancfstrong contrasts. My l would have a:ist a fortune!".·· . videos don't like 'h.i-�h'; in fact they're The shots were edited onto one-inch !most anti hi-tech!-· tape and considerable time was devoted . • :. Like Peter Callas, John Gillies is to post-production to obtain.the final concerned with the portrayal of time in result. . his work and images flow across the . Much of'Techno/Dumh/Show' has screen· in a relentl�ss _ and compelling been shot in monochrome, although :rhythm.. _ .. · - .. some is in a:ilour. '."fhe colour has been "In places I'm cutting images,.� o fast

.-r

i:hey blur on your 'i;etina so you start to create images which appear to be layered on top of each other, whereas they're actually separate images", he ·. says. "A lot of m y videotapes are linked to paintings I've done because I can use the video as a moving painting. That's what I like about video; it's also cinema like and a musical means of expression. It has lots of possibilities because of the different ideas you can bring to it." . As well as producing the videos,· Gillies also composes his own·. ·-.· soundtracks. "I've always wanted to· .. · · . ma.1rn work in .which the sound and the· image were equally important and . inter-related", he explains. "I'm only · . interested in making videos in which I do the soundtrack. I like to work · · simultaneously on sound and image·. . • because I'm interested in how ·working ·on sound and image at the same time :· ·. . can affect the outcome."· Ambient sound from the few location shots is occasionally combined. with music in the soundtrack. "The · piece is a bit of a mishmash of different elements", Gillies adds, "with no words at all, even though the actors are · . · obviously saying things. That's one of the reasons it's called a 'dumb show'." Techno/Dumb/Show will be shown

A OETNl FROM THE O!SPU'IY ON T'HE MONITOR IN TH€ TOP SECTION QI' THE PY'RAMIO.

Mondays to Saturdays and noon to 5.00 p.m. Sundays. Admission costs are $4.00 for adults and $2.00 for· children and concessions. The Perspecta Video Program, which will be screened at the Gallery's Domain Theatre on 15 and 22 August at 1.00 p.m. and 18 and 25 August at . 3.00 p.m., has been curated by Gary . Warner. Warner describes the program_. as a series of 20 or more short (less than two minutes) sequences which · explore three-dimensional space. ·. · Produced by video artists from all over Australia who use a range of equipment from low-end domestic to high-end professional gear, these video clips include a variety of techniques from computer animations to three-. · dimensional modelling... ; - . . _· . "We hope this program will provide audiences with a good introduction to in a theatre environment on a large .. ,.·· : explains .. "There is demand for it- but ·. it's an underground genre which only · the mainly young artists who are .. ·. · screen with high sound levels,· - · . video". Warner 'immersing' the viewer in the video/. :,.: · :- .. occasionally emerges onto television or..__,. working seriously in . . . . . .. : ; .. says. a•J}lio experience.·::- _ · · · into large public art galleries where . . : Perspecta Forum: Ne·w Ai-t, New :i Like Peter Callas, John Gillies has:: thousands of people get to see it. And Spaces, a panel discussion on virtual shown his work in overseas festivals. · they're often totally bemused by it!" reality which will take place on _10 He has also, however, prnsented it in · Australian Perspecta 1991 will run August at 10.30 3..m. local pubs, clubs and galleries. "Art from 7 August to 15 September at the· For.further details, phone video is a fairly independent and also 1\rt Gallery of New South Wales (02) 225 1778 or fax (02) 221 6226. rather ·underground' �.ovement", he between 10.00 a.m. and 5.00 p.m. on I·

John Conomos looked at video at Perspe(:ta 1991 and discovered . ..

A video that questions the primacy ofnarrative installation space is the cacophonous soundtrack of clanging bells, boat and car· One of the more nrresting and e,tciting horns, people crying, laughing and works in this year's Perspect.a 1991 is the applauding, determining the look of each collaborative video work, sequence of people waiting aruciously by a Techno!Dumb!Show, by John Gillies and phone, whispering to one another, fro:ien The Sydney Front. To appreciate this in Duras-like positions, dialing phones, video installation's sumptuous swinging on ropes, and conducting an multifaceted conceptual and textual (off-screen) symphony orchestra as complexities we need at the outs�l to exaggerated burlesque parody. Close-ups mention how il was constructed. of faces are emphasised in their various Working together John Gillies and The ,I per(ormative expressions, close-ups that Sydney Front wanted to do a work that remind you of Acconci, Campus and went beyond the form and vocabulary of Oldenbach. The contrapuntal aesthetics of the contentional documentary. to create a ·• the soundtrack in certain passages also 'i.·•;�" work that would delineate the pleasurable evoke the aural stylistics of concrete gestural theatricality of perform�ce, and music . � ... suggest, in the process, the chaouc order ,.,, ... Visually and sonically this is a work of performance as well. Thus, the work's r�•-\·• that is notable for its elaborate refinement dynamic intertextual aesthetic tries to I avoid tl1e compulsion to create a narrati� and conceptual open-endedness in l '{. o questioning the primacy of narrative in text, in the more traditional sense of the .,, , twcntielh century art and culture. Further, .,�•Y / term, and provides a highly sensuous and ·: 1 ' . Techno/Dumb!Show succeeds as I thought-provoking audio-visual experimental video because it challenges architecture where the spectator John Gillies' Tec/mo/Dumb/Show the spectator to question traditional ::::::.::::..:: =:.:.:.....: :.:.:.:.:.::::..::..::::.:.::::.::..:.:�..:_------------encounters a whole array of different --�definitions of melodrama, naturalism and theatrical gestures and intense emotions, sound the aesthetic and cultural the art fonn's conceptual and formal performance, and contemplate an aesthetic constituting a veritable labyrinth of parameters of performance as excess, and of the body and its manifold gestural plasticity in connecting with other and dislocation, pleasure, reverie and vertigo. different art forms. Aside from references at the same time, contextualising this pleasures that go beyond the troubling Gestures evoke the melodramatic to melodrama, cinema and painting, we project in relation to other media. There is s;.;c1ures of Aristotelian dramaturgy. This character of performance in the classic can also see how the work's polyvalent at play in Techno/Dumb!Show an is video that poses questions, it does nol narrative cinema (particularly the silent tcxtuality borrows ideas and experimental experimental push to stretch the imagistic pretend to have answers; this is video that era) and the theatre. fo1ms from the art movements vf early and sonic language of video and enunciate is alive to the multiple conceptual and More specifically, both Gillies and The twe:1tieth century modernism. Black and new and improvisatory riches. In terms of ironic registers of its own title. Sydney Front worked on an impr �v! satory white images of crouched male and video installation it is simple in its basis over three months, where G1lhes as female bodies moving along an imaginary sculptural mode: overhead projection, a director was not so much concerned to axle facing the spectator connote large screen and two small speakers on • For more background Information oo the \ exercise tight control over the content and Futurism's aesthetic of speed and its either side of the screen. It works as an making orTcchno/Dumb/Show "" Pam shape of the work but, in collaboration attendant cult of the new. These bodies, installation because it astutely focuses on llansrord's enlry on John Gillies and The wilh the Sydney Front, fulfill a role hurtling along with flickering lighls in the lhc video's images and sounds. What is Sydney Front, Australia Pcnpecla t991 something akin to Renoir's definition of background, form one of the key catalogue (Art Gallt'l"Y NSW). significant in the dark architectonics of the film maker as sleepwalker - someone who sequences of the work and enhance its allows the poetry or ch:ince and dialogue underlying concern to portray the to slip through lhe net of directorial intent. heightened emotionalism and gcslUral The individual performers were able lO pleasures or performance; echoing direct themselves and capture some of the Vcrtov's cinema and lhe Russian artisL� who have contributed their work lo Film maker Ross Harley is currcnlly / more improvisatory and emotional aspects avant-gardes of the lwenties, and more putting together an archival project foi the the exhibition. When finished, the video �lo[ their performances. recently, Paikian video (I'm thinking will be distributed' to all artists and Art Gallery of NSW. ll's a record of j Techno!DumbtS/iow' s extraordinarily especially of Global Groove (1973)) Perspecta 91, both a documentation of the sponsors, and will also be available for I allusive and elabor,Hc images and sound educational institµtions and other galleries. show itself and intervi�ws. of about five What impresses (time and again) is the : speak not only of video's postmodemisl minutes each, with about forty of the work's formal deftness, exploring through 1 acslhclic of temporality but also suggest colour, image, performance, space and �9�

.."·

..:r.�,

Perspecta 91 on Video

Artists working with new technologies In 1994 Griffith Artworks will be focussing its public programmes and services around the Griffith University Art Collection. Through a variety of exhibitions, and public art projects as well as performance and artist-in-residence activities, Artworks will create opportunities for creative interaction with the University's exciting and unique collection of contemporary Australian art. Videomaker and performance artist John Gillies will begin a nine-week residency on 21 February, 1994. The residency will be co-hosted by Griffith Artworks, the Queensland College of Art and the Faculty of Humanities, Film and Media School. John will stay in the University Residencies (Nathan) and during his residency he will complete several short video/performance works using the University's video , sound and computer imaging facilities. An exhibition of John's work will be held at the QCA Gallery, opening on Thursday 14 April. John will also have direct contact with students and staff in the lntermedia courses at the QCA, Music Technology at the QCM, Media courses in the Faculty of Humanities, and the Centre for Multimedia Research and Development. He will also conduct screenings/workshops/seminars on his work. ( for more information on john and his work see article by Curator Beth Jackson on 'Techno/Dumb/Show') Following hot on John Gillies trail will be Film-maker Geoff Weary. Geoff's eight-week residency is planned for May/June and will be co-hosted by the Faculty of Humanities and Griffith Artworks. Geoff will also stay in the University Residencies (Nathan) and will work out of both the Faculty of Humanities Film and Media studios, and the Griffith Artworks Artist studio. Geoff will work closely with students and staff from Media studies, Faculty of Humanities to produce a single channel version of a multi-channel experimental video work for screening in a cinematic environment. There will be a major public screening of Geoff's work. John and Geoff are both artists working with new technology and they are keen to interact with students and staff from the University throughout their residencies. If you have an interest in new technology and would like to meet and work with these visiting artists please contact Griffith Artworks on ext. 875 7414 for more details.

JOHN GILLiES Artis��in-Resic!er.ce. Gr!ffith University Funding from t�e Visual Arts and Craft Board has been received for a nine week residency by Sydney based intermedia artist John Gillies. Gillies' video works have screened at festivals throughout the world and in 1992 his video oollaboration with the Australian performance group, The Sydney Front' received First Prize at the Video Brasil festival. He has also collaborated with many musicians and is a lecturer at the College of Fine Arts , University of • · New South Waies. The residency will commence on 21 February 1994 and wili be co-hosted by Griffith Artworks and the Queensland College of Art. During the residency John will complete a new work using the Faculty of Humanities video, sound and computer imaging faciiities. An exhibition of John's work will be held at the QCA Gallery, opening on Wednesday 13 April at 2.00pm. John will have direct contact with students and staf(in the lntermedia courses ·at the QCA, Music Technology and Experimental Music at QCM, Media cou;-ses in the Faculty of Humanities, and the Centre for Multimedia Research and Development. John will also give a guest public leGture at the Institute of Modem Art, Brisbane and a screening lecture at both the QCA and Nathan campuses of Griffith University.

' t ..

Elevations of Trauma TECH NO DUMB. SHOW

....

- John Gillies & The Sydney Front

by Vikki Riley

N the past decade, popular culhtre's obsession with the politics of the body, or ratr.er how to best expose and propel the body into perfor mance, has lead to an over-saturation of phoney sensuality. While much video art has sought to dismember and abstract the body away from its neshy tangibility in order to talk about 'the self', television ad vertising and MTV (via a few Holl1wood exploitation and horror genres) has consolidated the 'effects' of the body's performance into a cult of health and efficiency. The limits of mobility and severance of the body from the personal have been stretched - the body is now (for the mo ment, for the New Age) metaphor for a new kind of athleticism which promotes power in the form of virility an(\ bodily agility, a regime which excludes and rejects the fundamental tenets of expression in the name of , ' choreography. 1l1e work of The Sydney Front sets oul to reclaim the endless land scape of gesture, expression, bodily function and dramaturgy of the psyche. Primarily a performance troupe of actors, their prolific output and Artaud-like confrontation of the audience addresses immediately the fallacies inherent in performance when dealing with the abstract. The in tense physicality of the .performer's gesture means that abstraction be comes exhausted, expended, defined only in the end by the material

-33I

---- --

•

--·---------=------------

. !

inside the body's mechanisms of internal movement and duress, a kind of individual test of durability, mortality. This section is followed by a close-up of a red, almost swollen face and slowed down facial movement brings the effect of the first sequence to a contemplative pause; the body, the face does not rest, but transforms into a gaze, the gaze repeats itself as a search. Like what the entire video tells us about the performer, it is impossible to escape the condition of the individual alone whatever situation you put him/her in. 17,e next section logically takes the condi tion one step further: two figures sit by a phone, their hands play out a drama of anxiety, a stress of anticipation. Cut to a woman, laughing or crying, in a crowd. She is dressed in old worldly attire, wringing her hands, rolling her eyes in a nervous hysterical pose. It is here that clear correlations between the performers' placement within an 'artificial' scene and other, extemporal media emerges. 11,e next scene seems to confirm this: a crowd scene in which the performers are placed strategi cailj' to indicate an audience or spectators of a grand spectade - the emo tive gestures transform, over a period of seconds, from extreme elation and surprise to a sense of awe, even horror and persecution, intensely claustrophobic, exhaustively oppressive. Here it is important to mention Gillies' tech11' :-,I collaborators, par-

limitations of the fle�h and muscle ... ''.·... returning to where meaning is embodied, it aims to protect itself: and the spectator from moral demagogy, and from the terrorism of grand abstractions that cannot be lived out.",.. Techno Dumb Show more than documents The Sydney Front's lexicon of performative' tropes. As the title alludes, it is a video 'workout' of not only the group's technique of expressing the body as the aesthetic, it re-integrates performance as a minefield of emotive play, calling upon various traditions of early cinema, mime and theatre in order to trans gress notions of minimalism and melodrama by exploiti11g their very context. 11,e result is a compelling urgency and desperation which intro duces a heightened naturalism (or, dare I say, primacy) as the major drive in its non-linear narrative, a kind of contract with the viewer which en forces a feeling of necessary endurance, even pa.in. After an opening sequence of a woman dialling a telephone, the work continues with head-on shots of what appear to be runners, or cyclists, racing towards the camera within a hyper-space of a protracted irt_f.inity where the focus is on the excess of energy, or how energy can be if con sumption of the stress and tension which the body produces as combus tion. Man here is alone, competing with himself, travelling nowhere but ,. John Bayliss, 'Perspecta' Pr �gram Note

-34-

ticularly Stephen Harrop (editor), well known for his work in Super 8 in which he fuses together, through precise editing, various melodramatic 'moments' in the cinema, amplifying small gestures into grandiose nar ratives of human facial expressions, discarding the contextualisation of dialogue and mise-en-sccne and replacing it with a fi nely honed drama of pleasure and pain. In Techno Dumb Show, while the crowd scenes are reminiscent of old Hollywood masters of expressive melodrama (in particular the Jacques Toumeur /Val Lewton films of the 40s and SOs) the feel is more in line with the melodrama of the early Russian silent direc tors such as Pudovkin and Vertov, and it is this aura which pervades much of Techno Dumb Show itself as an emotive rendering of how, in the present day, the individual can be erased as a protagonist in his/her own reality. On this level the video is 'about' what author Don de Lillo describes as 1iving in a time of the masses.' The soundtrack further comments on this barrage of pressures on the individual to 'perform' in all situations, taking a silent film soundtrack approach to what are, basically, visceral images. Sounds of cacophonous laughter, applause and hysteria mingle and punctuate within a sound scape of _ treated noise, bells, drums, backwards tapes and various other industrial generated sound, as well as weaving a music-concrete symI

•

phony of more classical dimensions. As the video progresses, the sense of oppression and isolation intensifies. A man moves painfully along a prison-like corridor, haggard faces writhe in delirium while red, naming specks of ash filter across the screen. There is a sex scene which harks f bc ck to Genet's Chant d'amour. TI,e final scene is of a conductor ad dressing invisible/offscreen or nonexistent performers; his movements repeated in stop motion, arms flailing about in mid-air, his face a contor tion of elation, disappointment, shock, a portrait of ry,adness evoking Mumau's work, the actor, Nigel Kellaway, himself resembling Max Schreck in all his confused, driven anxiety states. It is this last scene, which you hope will never end, which seems to articulate the video's ul timate power, the unstoppable emotions externalised in performance, their unexpected capacity for true, anarchic vision, the untapped pain and tension which can be unleashed at any given moment. For it is the dynamism of dislocating these unkempt gestures from their (natural) narrative order which gives new meaning and orientation to the tired,,,· overspent debate of the politics of the body.

All stills fro111 Tec/1110 D11111b Sir ow (see nlso fro11t cover). -JS-

--· -- -�·- -:--�==================

...:

/··J □ rlN GiLLt'ES AND THE SYDNEY FRONT

,_·�..;.i::·

• . · ·. '

' \ .. Ulti ately the ;_.,erk 0is about excess. about . - . · ·technical : ·· is o�erloaded �ith � ;arie� of . '. ·.rECHNq/DUMB/SHOW l'T) . . · . ·a gest uring that goes far b�yond that · ·· . . ·. . A COLLABORATIVE WORK BETVyE_EN · '· . effects. and .made even mor� excessiv� · (l_ecessary for any ·•,easonoble' discours�.·I� · JOHN GILLIES ANO THE SYDNEY FRONT by mea· ns of a strident sound track that .. is an · ex�ess oi u'ner waste, but.expending · · .' · '. ·.'· also ser.:-es as an editing device fo,' each · ·· · · · . ,'only"the performers; bodies. And it has no . . ' John Gillies and The Sydney Front �e quenc� of g�stures." ;· ' . For ·. ·- other designs -on the spectator than the' · ·fhere is an e�id�nt interest in 'sil�nt film . the performance work Which formed the gene ration of ple·asure - . a pleasure . ·. · . - provoked by ver.igo and Sheer · . surprise at . . .:. · .· .· : b�sis of Techno;Vu mb/Show�s a i::��tral in many of the formal devices used in . the generosity of the act: though paid for by . · · part orthe conceptualisation of this Piece; . T�chn;;Du°,nb/ShO�# such as an emphasis.',· . 'n�gotiating'the bitter asides that �re also a '.· ' · :: .: ;·\··, · . · the video· is not ·a docamentary of a · on gesture and image _, and. a des.ire to part of the display. 1 : - ·: ·· ' . . _ · . ·performance · bu· t separate a fore9round the nature and pleasure of . '. : _ . ': ' collaboration which was a completely . theatrical' ges.ture itself.. Techno/Du;.,b/ ... PAM HANSFORD : . and.· vis .1,1all/ different �a; of working. both for Gillies Sho�. is. ari am bitious . . a�d The ·sydne/ Front . . At the out�et it su-�p_ tuo�s ·attempt to··elaborate an .. . -.. . -.: '. ·. : :. . _.w,as· decided that. to ;impiy· d� r.·um ent . ·aesthe'tic".;..,hi�h capture� the essence: ,• l; John· Bayliss. W;,/1z: �Oles from Th· � Syd�ey . . . Front :· • • _: . · ·· • . . . · performance·s· w hic·h : are typically even the physiology, of staged action: , . · 2 John Bayliss. Th e'°S�ane; · FroM.P e rsp· •ecra · . · . · . c�nfrontatio�al,, s,om�times shocking, a bee n have �hich es p tro' · the of Many . nd · Prog�amm e Notes ' ', '•often aggr_essive to an audien'ce, ,would be ' .empioyed to capt'ure· the spirit.of excess ; � ·: .to· dest;oy · its rear"su bstance ·. The which animates Techno/Dumb/Sh�w can . . _ r..; on video'·, b�· fou��-in' clasfic �elodram_a: j' 'ohn. -{ ' chall�nge y.as to creat� � fo Front writes: which could relay the gestural essence of Bayliss of The. Sydney . . . .perf�rming. · an9 provide the.vi�wer witb . a.. • Melodrama is de.spised. in our c'entury tor sens!=l _of the . disorganisatio· n that often . · vert theatricality, _.its heightened its. o · . a performance accompa!')ies in the · · · :- : :·. - emo1ionalism. It d9es not con.form · to the · · · · · .. ··. . :- ·, · · . theatre. ·· .. . . , · ·dictates of naturalism ... Melodrama draws · . . .. The sc�ipt for !echno/Dt.fmb/Show �s ··attention to its own histrionic display: It ·presents a public language of the.emotions. worked out over a long period of time;� The interest i s · not in psychological · ·Gillies shot footage every week over a subtleties;' but in the permu\ations within a tl:lr�e �onth ·period, collecting materiai ·: 1 ·a'.1d expe_ r imenting with it, as well . finiie array of po;sible meani�g. ,

w°orl<·.

.... ·• ·

discussing possibilities and problems_ with . .:_In Gillies' previous works. _such ·as:. the group: In the end; twenty hours of. e can pinpoint similar interests. footage was _edited .down to a final �enty Hymn. Of! H_ e re a yery short· sequence of movement minutes. ' During . this per_iod Gillies saw . .. . ... ' . .of thl-' D e, bodies has been sam_, pl_ed from a , ' : · · ·. : :.. . , . h'1mse If pnman·. y as an organiser rather 'Jl1' . . Hollywood movie. and p�t on a loop to tha� 'director. i�provising in the 'studio .-. '.. . ' extend: and repeat ·The: effect i_s to ; . . . with :the perfoi�er's. and the fi�al piece · . . . . gestures · a t r their ns o n ·trcim one of r - 't i .. ' . ;: · . :can perhaps best be seen as a cataloguing . · original s p the lication n a r rative _( · of gestures rattier than a narrative work. in · u p function). ir;ito som�thing new which has _ _ any conventional sens�.· t_ . � int the �educed oin nsified to bee and · Videq was the perfect medium .to· use � � · a _ i t where ysiologica resembles ph i · . for this project . both because.'p f its · . . · . : ng. react on such as.breathi i . economy,a�d .the fact that' each take can : > . ·· : T echr:oiDumb/Sh'ow is a ··visually s: m be on back d inst�ntly onitor e play_ . .. .-: . . that the actors can direct themselves. So, ·elaborate �nd extraordinarily sensual piece ' of wo�k which'_fod�ses on the _forma_l -�· '·for example. ;ne might. start With an · aspects of performance i!l' a way, which ' e . improvisation� ·catalogue it on tap , and . · narrative. Yet in a paradoxical rescinds then beg.i n to ;:,..,.ork with the results. . . · w_ a y'. it is in this ·act sf cancellation that · :ke eping whatever turns out to be interesting and useful. u;ing accidents and questions about the conditions for, and · .: . ·' 'mistakes·. ,and incorporating the h'ighly functions of �arrative, can ·be asked anew; 42 sel_f-conscious nature 'o f the whole and it is to !he bo�ies of the p�rformers to procedure: The result is an extraordinary · which ·we are re ferred for p·o ssible intensification of . theatrical gesture which answers. ,John Bayliss writes:

�o-

J/ f.l�frcc lt 'a ·n

P.erspe:c.+a.. . 91.

Techno/Dumb/Show. 199 I ► · videotape. (detail)

A6.N.5.'rJ

,JOHN GILLIES Artist-in-Residence, Gr!ffith University Funding from the Visual Arts and Craft Board has been received for a nine week residency by Sydney based intermedia artist John Gillies. Gillies' video works have screened at festivals throughout the world and in 1992 his video collaboration with the Australian performance group, 'The Sydney Front' received First Prize at the Video Brasil festival. He has also collaborated with many musicians and is a lecturer at the College of Fine Arts , University of New South Wales. The residency will commence on 21 February 1994 and will be co-hosted by Griffith Artworks and the Queensland College of Art. During the residency John will complete a new work using the Faculty of Humanities video, sound and computer imaging faciiities. An exhibition of John's work will be held at the QCA Gallery, opening on Wednesday 13 April at 2.00pm. John will have direct contact with students and staff in the lntermedia courses at the QCA, Music Technology and Experimental Music at QCM, Media cou;-ses in the Faculty of Humanities, and the Centre for Multimedia Research and Development. John will also give a guest public lecture at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and a screening lecture at both the QCA and Nathan campuses of Griffith University.

./ '

. t , ..

--,

·(�,-)

. . \ '

. . "\

. ...

·•·_ . • w

•

••

·'•

;

. .. . .

. ·. .·... ... . . .

---

. . · ·\1-· .

·> ·;'f , . .

. • ., ... John �� ·. .

·. ·•

.. ,

. . . : . .: ..:_ . , . : . . .. . .. .. . . ·. . ·.. . . . . . - ..:_ . '

•: • � •

• '

. . ..

• ; ' - • 1

•,

•

· 1960' · Bea�ck·sert, · Queensland.·_": · _ _. ·. :· , '·_:"·.· ·-� . . . · :' ;�-::=-6/r I Lr'./1 ,,..,,,_ ,,J;,i<d_r<.-:.! · i-1 v;ft c. i k ;.j_ .- :-. .-· .· '. .... ·.: .

•

.. : ·.. ·:· .

....

• I •

Lives� Sydney_·:.·.

·'

· : · .. ,. .

.. l'. •·..

·.•

. i: '

. cl" 4D Time�b�d. · · · : i· · . . ·• . · . . · -· . \

H�-��ured at�ti�e�ous·:uol;e;siti�s- and -��-former!; the head

tudks ;;t the College of Fine Arts. University of NSW. . . • · .5 . ·: "Mus1c/Video.Perfor�ances ·.. . . ,.

.·1991

.·.a··· . .. . .

Har.bourside B�as·serie .,_.Sy_�ey .

. __ . .

. .

-\._-

{ . The Performance Space_: -A�'straliati In�rnation� Vid� Festiv� ·Sydney ' ·Arthaus · ·sy�ey : .. I .

. _1989 ....

-I·

. 1968 ·

·. : ·. ···. Australian C.""ntr'e f01). Contemporary.Art . . . . · . .. First Draft Sydney> . i°98T : _-. - . · : · ·· - -\,

The.Gu· ii·Turret: .:.�in .: . . . - Institute of Modern Art: · Brisbane T.h� Site•. ·. Sydney. · -Syct·s · Sy�ey-_ ·· . f ._A c. c .fj . 1986 . . rhe_ Tin.Sh�ds·.-: -' Sydney .. . . ...

. · ·:. ium and Video Collections

· : Australian_ National Gallery Canberra · University of.Technology. Sydney . ,.

\ \

\:·I . . .

Erperimenta _ Melbourne ,

I, • t

. '.

- .,

. ..

. . .· . .

\/ . • \·· . . : .. 1 •

•

.i .I

· p· Jication for Grant - Projects Program B - Description and Details of Proje.ct

p cction

. p Je as e No tc: Sec;:cions B, C and D provide the assessment committee. members with an ov_erview of you_r application. As these sec.tions are circulated in advance of their meeting, it is in your interest to ensure that these details give a clear presentation of what you want to do. why, and how much it will tosL BJ.

Name Qf applicant/organis ation:·

Griffith A=tworks, Griffith University B2.

Working title: John Gillies, Artist-,in-Residence

BJ.·

-Project contact: Dr. Margriet Bonnin Telephone: (07) 875 7686 Amount Requested: $10,440.00

Project d escription: ( Summarise the project, including the aims ar.d rationale. For Project Development Graf!ts, summarise the concept or plan to be developed.) ·· · ..

A residency is envisaged for.a nine-week period during 1993 in which artist John Gillies will extend his intennedia work in video, sound and performance to complete several short video/performance works. Gillies is spending six months in Europe in the first half of 1993,and his �esidency will commence upon his return to Australia. · The envisaged video/performance works will draw from sound and video material collecled in•Europe. Gillies will use the new professional video, sound and ,. . · computer imaging studios (see attached equipment list) at Griffith University to undertake post-production work based on this material. He will also have access to Music Technology staff and studios at the Queensland Conservatoriufn of Music. Video/perf ormances of new work and earlier works will be held on various campuses of Griffith University including the Queensland c;:onservatorium of Music and the Queensland College of An. Video work completed du..,ing the residency-will then be screened at the Soundculture FestiWll in Japan in S�tember/October 1993. Gillies will commence rjs residency wit.h' a guest lectures 2.t the Institute of Modem An and at the University where his video work entitled Techno/Dumb!Show, re;;ently purchased by the Griffith Vniversicy Art Collection and exhibited at Perspecta 1991, will be screened. Be-w� ..par-:icipate in Griffith Artworks' public workshop program (see attached) with a workshop for artists on video/performance -w.otk. During the residency he will have contact with students in Intennedia courses at the College of Art, in Music Technology and Experirnental·Music at the Conservalorium of Music, ·and in courses on Meclia and Avant Garde Theories i!) the Division of Humo.nities. The video/perfonnance works will be the subject' of a catalogue essay and a feature article in Eyeline, Brisbane's Contemporary Art Mag�ne, written by Dr. Nicholas Zurbrugg, lecturer iii Humani�es, Griffith Universiry. This anicle will be published as part of a debate in the magazine on the subject of technology-based arts, and a colour irnage from one of Gillies' videos will be reproduced on the cover of Eyeline. Dr. Zurbrugg has researched .lnd written extensively on the interface between technology and perfonnance in both national and international contexts. · The performance/video works completed during the residency will investigate human expression th.rough the :relationship be�ween bodily presence and technological mediation. Video and sound technologies are seen as creative tools, positive extensions of the bodily gesture. Through the use of sound and image distortion and other 'inappropriate' uses of tliese media, technology is explored to its limits. These short works will not be seamless works of spectacle. - Tney are inte:1ded, in spontaneity, to explore technology as a workable tool connected to human experience. They will ?.ttempt to· rescue technology from notions of surveillance and control. In using performance in conjunction with technological media Gillies actempis to renegotiate discourses which place the human body in a position of privilege and transcendance. Gillies' residency will be a major initiative in exploring the creative potential of the University's new interdisciplinary and iJ1cermedia resources. Through renewing contact with Gillies, who is originally from Queensland, it will also provide Queensland artists with a basis fo r networking with intermedia artists interstate and overseas. Brisbane independent filmmakers and visual artists working in the area of video/performance (such as Tim Gruchy, Jim Knox, Joseph O'Connor) would benefit from John Gillies presence in Brisbane. Perfonn�ce an on Brisbane has had a lively and interesting history, bul major venues (such as John Mills National, and That Space) were closed down during the late eighties and many Queensland Performance artists have moved interstate where there is more support for their work. (e.g: Virginia BaITett, Barbar.i Campbell, John Gillies). New groups and venues are onJy just beginning to re-emerge. The focus of interest such a reSidency in Brisbane would provide is a much needed impetus at a crucial time in support of this marginalised anfonn.

::.

� plicati<?n for Grant-. Projects Program .1,;; p . section B Continued Describe the likely benefit of your project. The artist will have free access to state-of-the-art facilities which are ordinarily expe"nsive and difficult to obtain. A prim ary benefit of this residency is the exposure to and exploration of intermedia artwork (video/sound/performance) for the Brisbane communi ty. Th e cross-College_ collaboration this would involve for Griffith University would forge new professional connections and spark future inierdisciplinary initiatives. Brisbane Independent Filmma.kers and visual artists· working in the area of video/performance would benefit from John Gillies presence in Brisbane. Such a residency in.Brisbane would provide is a much needed impetus at a crucial time in support of these marginalised artforms. Gillies' guest lectures at venues such as the Institute· of Modem rut and Zu rbrugg's catalogue essay and article in Eyeline magazine would make a significant contribution to current critical debate surrounding issues of the role of technology in art practice and the challenge posed by intermedia ar.tforms to contemporary artmakihg.

BS.

How does the project relate to your organisation'-s purpose and history, or to your organisation's exhibition's policy? (Individu_:i.ls applying for a Project Development Grant should nominate the .organisation that will rnanage·the final project)

The broad purpose of Griffith Artworks is to re-integrate art into the e�eryday lives of the Univ·ersity and wider Brisbane community. Griffith Artworks offers high qua1ity studios and equipment for professional artists while at the same time endeavouring to create an environment in which members of the local community are encouraged, through contact with practising artists,· to undertake creative work of their own. Since 1976 Griffith Artworks has hosted twenty-five successful residencies for artists in various media. The Griffith University Art Collection h as recently begun to acquire contemporary works .in video, and has a stated policy 'of · · supporting ephemeral artworks such as performance and intermedia works. Gillies' residency � a means of furthering commitment to creati :'ely uniting �� sual �ts with contemporary wo��s i� sound.. _ - _ _ _ _ -

B6.

Give details of facilities and other su pport your organisa tion will provide. (For.residel)cics describe; srudio, accommodation, travel, equipment, etc. provid_ed for the artist.)

Access to the Humanities Media Studio Complex, the· sound production facilities at the Consei-vatorium of Music; a private 6 x 12 m. studio space; materials (audio and video tapes and small equipment hire); workers compensation; insurance of artist's work; return airfare Sydney/Brisbane/Sydney; local travel allowance; use of University vehicle when required; free on c:.impus accommodation; all administrative support; assistance with holding performances/exhibitions; catalogue and documentation. Facilities and support will be the subject of a contract between the artist and the University (see attached model).

B7.

Brieny describe the marketing and promotion strategies planned for the project. (Include opening arrangernen_ts, lectures, forums, film/video presentation) For guideance in developing your marketing and promotion strategy our 'Checklist Guide for Marketing & Promotion' is available for

rekren�.

The residency will be annoW1ced in articles/interviews in the Griffith Gazette the Courier Mail, comrnur.ity newspapers, and radio stations 4ZZZ, 4MES,- 4MMM, and 4QR, and-wiU be�eed-on-the Anworks:-19.9.3...ca!endar (which is-a free publication with 15,000 c0pies dislributed throughout Queensland and carried by all major Galleries and Arts organisations in Brisbane). ,, Notification for all events held at Griffith University will be plac�d in the Griffith Gazetce (a cross-campus University pu'l>lication); Artsnews (a cross-campus Griffith Artworks newsletter beginning in 1993); posters and flyers placed throughout the various University campuses and in galleries and perfonnance venues in Brisbane. These events will also be advertised through the Institute of Modem Art's mailing list, the qeline calendar of events, The Brisbane Review (a free fortnightly arts newspaper), and Arc Almanac. The guest lecture at the Institute of Modem Art will be placed on the Institute's monthly calendar of events· mailed to the · · .· . · Institute's 111embers and major Arts organisations. . Special effons will be made through mailouts and posters to target filmand performance groups in Brisbane.

Wednesday 20 I April I

John Gillies, Australian video artist and musician, currently Artist-in-Residence at Griffith University.

12.00-1.00pm

at Central Theatres 2. Nathan campus. Enquiries: Griffith Artwol1cs 875 7414

WEI.COM£

w Lilt:: wcw.u11c11'). Macquarie University linguist, -1s Pam Peters, also a member of ?nary editorial ••he M �cquarie_ dicti conumttee, said· this year's Style ' Council meeting took on a political flavour, with papers from chief anu auwuun,;

u, "i:lCH 11uu.::..:: Lilt: l)kLI.U, UVWH-w

earth, concrete nouns of the lower house; the more academic, de tached, abstract words of the upper house," Peters said. "They seem to reflect differences in the level of debate, the way is-

LJ.J.t.:�& J.

Vl.."-1..ui.,u) •l,.,.4.J,1.,,.

"LoUl,,,.a. t..,o'),.; ) ,

and a "rumble step" is what other Australians call a speed hump. In Melbourne, the term shopping jeep is what is known elsewhere as a shopping trolley.

-ERICAUB J { , ,-m

Griffith grant adds further focus to video

i:>Ulllt:UUUY a<:LUi:i.U,Y U,

my gun (Graffiti Feb 24-� their conununication-des in one of a series of articl

3- qStudents 'Ch.jin Sydney l building are being ask:£ corridors are too narro \':'·

Dr Reece Jennings, University council, repc been meeting on the sub are confidential and not writes in his regular ne there are two sets of st, ordinary staff there is relativity and you-kno,\ are incredibly simple." Ballarat, meanwhile, i to its door. After paying l month's student leaders! and computer networkin ing a similarly lavish of travel including cabs to between Melbourne and invitation.

Dr Bonnin (left) and Griffith artworks curator Beth Jackson with video still and disk that stores the Image Griffith University is moving its art collection further into the niche area of video and electronic-based works with $A50,000 from the Australia Council Director ·of Griffith Artworks, Dr Margriet Bonnin, says there are no major c1Jllections specialising in video art. •Griffith University is in a unique position to establish a video, electronic and ephemeral art collection

through its oontemporary art, collection, its media studios, courses in media production and analysis, and it.s student audience of artists, music technologists and multimedia specialists," she said in a stat.ement. Griffith's latest artist in residence is videomaker and musician John Gillies, who will complete a video work using the university's video, sound and computer imaging facilities,exhibitandscreenhis work,give

public lectures and work with stu dents and staff. Gillies won first prize in 1992 at the international Video Brasil festival for a video collabora tion with Australian performance group The Sydney Front. Griffith's art collection concentrateson contemporaryAustralian art acquired since the university's foundation in 1975. The works hang in public spaces in almost all university buildings.

Acl:�laide freshens up with agency switch

The Uni'v;rsity ofAdelaide hopes to with the university's classified bill-· actually. C\\t its advertising costs ings alone running at upwards of while ·brusfiing up its image and half a million dollars a year, but adopting a rtew logo, following its declined to put an overall figure on decision to switch to Charterhouse the 12-month agreement. Advertisfug of Adelaide, after ten 'There was pretty strong competiyears 'with the Sydney-controlled . tion when it became clear that the Neville Jeffress-Adelaide Pty Lt.d, · university was interested in changMs Margaret Burke, director of ing its agency,• she said. "Chartermedia and public relations at the house came up with the freshest univef�ty, said it was the time for approach and identified major cost the university to"have a new, fresh savings for the university,and we are look-and to maxim ise cost keent.oget up and away with them. savings". She said the fact that _ "Primarily the university was Charterhouse was an local agency · looking at getting a simpler, yet very -was a bonus, but coincidental. effective new look in its advertising," f Severa agencies had 'pitched' _ Burke said. Charterhouse had idenf6r the account and all had been::-· tified"anumber ofmechanisms•that given the same brief. She said it ·would do that moreeffectively atless was a "fairly lucrative contr:act" cost,• she said. "We are going t.o have

an identifying icon that reflects the University of Adelaide and we will . probably be doing some campaign advertising in key areas later in the year." Mr Peter Simpson, the managing director ofCharterhouse, declined to discussdetails·untilall the necessary consultations had been carried out . and the new logo was ready to be formally launched. He said he was also particulariy pleased that the university was very active i n M alaysia, as Charterhouse was a partner in Charterhouse Webster in Kuala Lumpur, and there would be op portunities to strengthen the ties betweenAdelaide and Malaysia. -BRIAN DONAGHY

�ext case in Washington for UNSW moot winners

A UNSW team last week beat the University of Mel- .. senting the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and bowne in the Australian regional rounlls of the Jessup urs law dean Professor David Flint concerned granting International Law Moot Court Competition in the High refugee status. Students represented claims made by the Court in Canberra, and will go to Washington in April oountries ofFreedonia and Balboa to the International t.o 1'epresentAustralia against-80 teams from more than Court ofJustice. UNSWs winning team was Paul Lam-Po-Tang, 45 countries. Other semi-finalists in thiAustralian round were Wendy Landa, Vanessa Lesnie, Jeremy Philips and Ana Stanic. Supervisor is Mark Buchanan. the uni','.ersities ofAdelaide and Sydney. Landa won the award for best oralist in the prelimThe hypothetical case argued in Canberra before Jus.;,.,, M,n-v r..,,,nrlmn. Mr Pien-e-MicheLFontaine. reore- inaries and the final round.

�

CAM -

WEE

1Ji:�· 1 I'

·v--e. WOl ..

Jou can· puses aro to Campi One year (96 issue· year for s Name: Address:

□ □ □

Ende Erd:: Debil • .Ban k

- .

CARD NL HOLDER

SIGNATt.: PHONE

•

Residency a first for multi-media artist

When award-w inning multimedia John Gillies (above right) accepted an invitation from Griffith to underta ke his current residency, he knew the experience would be as beneficial for him as it would be for the students he would work with.

Sponsored by the Australia Council and cohosted by Griffith Artworks, Griffith's Queensland College of Art and Faculty of

6Ai�n_e;_

Humanities, John's nine-week stay at Griffith is in fact his first residency which coincides interestingly with the fact that Griffith's first artist in residence was also an electronic artist. "There are not many opportunities for elec tronic artists in Australia to undertake residen cies and I think residencies are important because they provide an opportunity for insti tutions to bring people and their ideas in from the outside," John Gillies said.

AP�tc-13 - { qq4:

Thurs, March 17

. LECTURE

7:00pm

John OilHes is a Sydney based video artist and experimental musician

currently undertaking a residency at Griffith University. John will be talking about his work, particularly his collaborative. projects with highly influential performance g·roups 'The Sydney F ront', 'Test' and Techno/Dumh/Show. The latter of these received 1st prize at the 9th Festival lnternationa!'in Brazil in 1992� An exhibition of work done during his residency will open at the Qld College of Art Callery on April 13.

[ru IN F O R MATIO N

WE AP O N

* STORE 5 " * IMANTS TILLERS "Diaspora

exhibitions

Curated by Gary Wilson Featuring work by key artists from the Melbourne collective 'Store 5'. March 3 - 26

The first Australian viewing of this major new work. Until March 26

events

* FREQUENCY RESPONSE - SOUND ART EVENT

UENC E Fll ... E NS O SP RE CY ..FllE UtN Sf. N O $P Rf CY N UE f .. Fll Soutttl "rt evettt .. " ttiqkt of i>r;s�?ltte' s more tHverse M-ttl ittvestiq4tive soMttl performers. From �coustic voice �ctivity to mecH?l m�ttrpur?ltrott to �o' s sottic tt,t"ykem .. " portfofio of wkere soutttl is comittq from. AH you tteetl "re your e"rs! Artrsts feut�red ;aclude Keir; Drppfe, Jufru a?lttzu, Duj"tt i>o;;c, Puttcis Couros, Jok� Reeves utttl Za�er(t.sfia.

A compilation of sound artists from Brisbane, performing live. Friday, March 25th - 8:00pm

* VIDEO SCREENING

A screening of videos by major American artists from the 60's and 70's. Tuesday March 8, 7:00pm

lectures

e JOHN GILLIES

Thursday March 17 at 7:00 pm.

Registered by Aus�alia Post: Publication OBH 3642. INSTITUTE OF MODERN ART BULLETIN: MARCH\994

DIRECTOR: NICHOLAS TSOUTAS 608 ANN SmEET (av GIPl'S) FORTI'I\JOE VALLEY OLD AUSTRAUA 4006 (07) 252 5750 FAX 252 !i172 TUES - FRI 11•5 SAT 11 ◄ The Institute of Modern Art receives finanelal assis1anee from the Queensland Government through the Minister for the Arts and from the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Auslralla Council the Federal Government's Arts Funding and Advisory Body. A.C.N. 009 942 821

IMAl '

.. . ·, ..

-�

':/

.: �

JOHN GILLIES Artist-in-Residence

Techno/Dumb/Show 11 A collaborative work between John Gillies and the Sydney Front 11

Techno/Dumb/Show 11 (1991) is an example of the rich creative possibilities for collaborative work and intermedia artforms. Through their collaboration, John Gillies and the Sydney Front (an experimental theatre group), produce a unique dialogue between theatre and film, the body and technology. 11

Techno/Dumb/Show 11 challenges the dominance of narrative and documentary in mainstream film. Bodily gesture and facial expression are retained as central metaphors without the accompanying aesthetics of expressionism and romanticism (associated with individualistic conceptions of the artist and artistic practice). The work continually parodies itself (laughing and crying, "booing" and applause are heard at the same time). The video process mediates theatrical presence, creating a critical distance. On the other hand, technology is rescued from notions of dehumanisation, and instead facilitates a study of human gesture and presence. The camera is not used as a tool of surveillance where the artist/film-maker surveys with an authorial 'eye' the actor/pawns in his constructed narrative. Rather, the actors use the camera like a mirror, to study and locate themselves. For more information please call GRIFFITH ARTWORKS on 875 7414 This residency has received assistance from the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council.

Austr11llal

�r Council

tor the Arts

JOHN GILLIES ARTIST-IN-A ESIDENCE

ARMADA COLOUR VIDEO INSTALLATION - DURATION 10 MINUTES Gillies is a Sydney-based artist and mus1c1an whose video Techno-Dumb Show recently won first prize in the Video Brazil International Festival.

ARMADA has been made during a short residency at Griffith University

sponsored by the Australia Council. It follows on from a residency last year in Barcelona, Spain, and is part of a longer work. Gillies is originally a Queenslander who grew up on a farm on the Darling Downs.

ARMADA is about memory, and the associations which certain objects can

create to conjure up absent people, feelings, and past events. Shadows cast across ancient hand-carved walls, and tiled floors (photographed in Barcelona) capture and reveal the ghosts of their makers. The sounds of footsteps, childrens voices, people eating, and the hum of multiple voices captured on short wave suggest absence or loss. Bibical texts, a Union Jack, a tartan scarf, an antique clock and the ghostly tall ships of the Australian armada (invasion) are images of authority and order. They refer to the ominous and often dislocating results of the imposition of mastery, religion and industrialisation which followed European exploration and the colonisation of Australia. The work also refers to the human presence behind the craft of video making. The video scratches superimposed over the wall images reveal the primal human desire to make a mark, or leave a memory of people's physical presence on earth. The reference to traditional Anglo/Celtic woven fabric alludes to the "thread making" and weaving of images, video signals, lines, and tones involved in video production.

Assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Council for the Arts

JOHN GILLIES Artist-in-Residence

)

(Contact GRIFFITH ARTWORKS 875 7414)

John Gillies is currently Artist-In-Residence at Griffith University, co-hosted by Griffith Artworks, Queensland College of Art, and the Faculty of Humanities. John's residency culminates in an installation of work he has completed whilst here, exhibited at the Queensland College of Art Gallery, Foxton Street, Morningside from 11th to 29th April. There will also be a screening of "Techno/Dumb/Show" accompanied by a talk by John at 1pm on Wednesday 20 April in Central Theatres I, Nathan Campus as part of the Free Lunchtime Concert Series.

--='{-:::-- SL> ----------------------------� This residency has received assistance from the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council

"">

TICHN 0/DUMB/SHOW

3:REENINGS

Australian Perspecta 1991 Art Gallery of NSW (season attendance: 18,S0S)(instlllrux:,nversm) Television and Video Festival'92 Spiral Hall Tokyo Japan DAI Nippon Tokyo Japan Sound Basis Visual Aris Festival 1991 Wroclow Poland London Film Festival National Film Theatre UK Beijing Film School China Film and 1V Institute West Australia Fremantle Australian International Video Festival AFI Cinema Sydney 6th Manifestation Intemationale de Video et de TV de Montbeliard France l\lfuumedia Festival Helsinki Finland New Visions International Festival of Film and Video Glasgow Brazil International Video Festival Sao Paolo SoundWatch Festival Auck1and Aotearoa/ NZ Frames Festival of Film and Video Adelaide South Australia 8th Internacional de Video de Cadiz Spain � Experinl!nta Festival Melbourne (installation ve�ion) National 1'vfuseum of Contemporary Art Seoul South Korea Sections from the work have also been screened during 1991 at

Video �dian Operative Berlin Film Festival 8th Kassel Dokumentar Film and Video Festival Germany Video V1Sions Art Gallery of NSW Sydney Third Eye Centre Glasgow Scotland Video Positive Tate Gallery Liverpool UK Video Mix View Factory Newcastle A�tralia Sydney Opera House Conference Hall AADE BROADCASTS

SBS Television Network

Australia

AWARDS

lstPrize Brazil International Video Festival Sao Poolo Special Cormnendation: Video Dance. Australian International Video Festival 1991

COLLECTIONS Fukuyama Museum Japan University of Technology, Sydney Griffith University Australia /

TEST Description: A very short test sequence, made in collaboration by John Gillies and The Sydney Front.

MADE BY JOHN GILLIES AND THE SYDNEY FRONT 1992 Available as 3min video from video master or 16mm print

PERFORMERS........................................ THE SYDNEY FRONT ANDREA ALOISE ELISE AHAMNOS NIGEL KELLAWAY CHRIS RYAN VIDEO........................ : .................................... JOHN GILLIES

PRODUCED WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE NEW IMAGE RESEARCH FUND OF THE AUSTRALIAN FJLM COMISSION DISTRUBUTION:

JOHN GILLIES 35 EXCELSIOR ST Ph 61 2 5608310 Fax 61 2 3399506

LEICHHARDT 2040 AUSTRALIA

. ...

*************** -SHERRIF LINDO ************** In 1988,

Sherrif Lindo

THE �IORL. ,

released

'10 DUBS THAT SHOOK

(ER 001) , ( Australia's ·first cult dub album ) ,

then came themes for SBS' 'MCTV' and work with the Massive Reggae and Dub Conference crews.

Sherrif Lindo

is now producing a new dub assault on the

public's ears and bodies with M.C. Opee, drummer John Gillies and remixes of other artists. · Watch Out and Listen !! Contact: Anthony Maher 2 Attunga St Seven Hills

NSW

2147 Ph. 02 6228756 Fax 02 3399506 (attn J Gillies)

!Jj!f!l!fl f!Jf!IIJ(ffj!fl![j !fl(ffj(ffj{ffj{J

Press Release

tECHNO/DUMB/SHOW

wins prestigious video prize

has won first prize at the highly prestigious Videobrasil International Festi•1al. TECHNO/DUMB/SHOW)

is a twenty-minute video that was made by video artist John Gillies and performance group The Sydney Front in 1991. It had its first public showing at Australian Perspecta at the Art Gallery of NSW, and has subsequently been shown widely both at home and abroad. Earlier this year it went to air on SBS's Eat Carpet. TECHNO/DUMB/SHOW

For more information, ring John Gillies on 02 560 8310 \

23.2.94

To the Director, Human Resources and Management

Dear Sir, I would be delighted to accept the position of Visiting Artist-in Residence under the conditions as outlined in your in your contract dated 16th of February 1994.