17/10/2012
Julika Rudelius
IMA@Ksubi, Brisbane
Forever. Double-screen video
German video artist Julika Rudelius has interviewed denizens of American high society, fashion-conscious European immigrants, political trainees, and sex-obsessed youths, compiling and editing their testimonials to construct insightful meditations on the roles of fashion, materialism, self worth, and identity in capitalist society. She filmed 'Forever' in the Hamptons, the summer retreat for the New York elite. In this double-screen video, five elegantly attired, well-preserved 'women of a certain age' pose around private swimming pools, stroll around their manicured properties, take Polaroids of themselves, and answer the artist's questions about beauty and aging, privilege and plastic surgery. Their responses are suffused with unstated fears and anxieties. Inner beauty is paramount, says one woman, 'although that is reflected by someone's looks'.