Nat & Ali Present: The Art Bar, at Gallery One. Matthew Sleeth: Tour of Duty, at Gallery Two. Jack Sweetman & James Cecil: Location, at Helen Mcpherson Smith Project Space.
Nat & Ali Present
THE ART BAR
Gallery One
Collaborative artist team Nat & Ali present THE ART BAR, a mixed
media installation/event transforming CCP's front gallery into a
public bar and artist hang-out. Surrounded by atmospheric lighting
and an original sound mix, Nat & Ali invite gallery goers to
shake-off their inhibitions and party unselfconsciously with one
another. Providing a playful entry into lifestyle and identity
politics, THE ART BAR parodies glamourised notions of the art
celebrity or superstar, slyly referencing the number of artists who
currently subsidise their practice through casual bar work. THE ART
BAR incorporates found images, media clippings and exhibition
ephemera installed lightbox-style into the service area of the bar.
These image-bank collages are influenced by the Dada tradition of
photo-text montage and are composed from an extensive archive of
found and second-hand material.
Nat & Ali will be serving drinks 'in the flesh' during 'happy hour'
from 3pm to 5pm, Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoons for the
duration of the exhibition.
THE ART BAR forms part of the Cultural Component of the 2002
Melbourne Fashion Festival and is supported by Arts Victoria and the
Besen Family Foundation. The opening night is sponsored by Sub Zero.
Matthew Sleeth. TOUR OF DUTY
Gallery Two
TOUR OF DUTY presents a significant and sustained visual
investigation into the international presence in East Timor
immediately following the Independence ballot in 1999. Sleeth uses
the visual vocabulary of traditional documentary photography and
disturbs and undermines it with techniques and angles borrowed from
cinema. His vivid colour and jaunty angles humorously yet incisively
track the Australian army and the accompanying media and
entertainment caravan in Timor to form an impression quite unlike the
one we have received from mainstream press. A far more complex view
emerges, formed of multiple layers of meaning. Importantly, the East
Timorese are not pictured as victims or bit players in their own
redemptive drama. Instead, this challenging body of work focuses on
the construction and staging of history.
Sponsored by Bond Imaging.
Jack Sweetman & James Cecil. LOCATION
Helen Mcpherson Smith Project Space
The spaces within which we construct our own ideas of 'home' have
often been inhabited by others before us, and may be again after we
have moved on. A place once private becomes public, and we search for
a new space with features that match those we already have in our
imagination. Jack Sweetman and James Cecil examine the ways in which
we desire to occupy these spaces, and the traces left behind by our
familiar routines.
This project was supported by a Pat Corrigan Artist Grant, managed by
NAVA with financial assistance from the Australia Council.
John Tonkin. MENISCUS
e-Media Gallery
Meniscus (http://www.johnt.org/meniscus) is a series of interactive
web works that explore ideas relating to subjectivity, scientific
belief systems and the body. In this series the ease of personal
transformation and improvement promised by the convergence of new
media technologies and biological research comes in for some serious
lampooning. Personal Eugenics, the third in the series, explores the
expectations of living in a cultural tradition that privileges
progress above all else. While eugenics was discredited by the
"excesses" of the Nazi holocaust, its thinking continues to be a
prominent strand in intellectual thought, manifest perhaps most
explicitly in the emerging field of biotechnology.
A part of the 24-7 Digital Art Program. Curated by Daniel Palmer and
supported by Film Victoria.
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Opening. Thursday March 07, 6-8pm
Gallery hours. Wednesday - Saturday 11am - 5pm
Centre for Contemporary Photography
205 Johnston St
Fitzroy Vic 3065
+613-9417-1549
+613-9417-1605