Creative Work (non-textual)
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(2013-01-17)Creative Work (non-textual)“Tranquility Falls” depicts a computer-generated waterfall set to sentimental stock music. As the water gushes, text borrowed from a popular talk show host’s self-help advice fade in and out graphically down the screen. As the animated phrases increase in tempo, the sounds of the waterfall begin to overwhelm the tender music. By creating overtly fabricated sensations of inspiration and awe, the work questions how and where we experience contemplation, wonderment and guidance in a contemporary context. “Tranquility Falls” contributes to studies in the field of contemporary art. It is particularly concerned with representations of spirituality and nature. These have been important themes in art practice for some time. For example, artists such as Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell have created artificial insertions in nature in order to question contemporary experiences of the natural environment. Other artists such as Nam Jun Paik have more directly addressed the changing relationship between spirituality and popular culture. Using a practice-led research methodology, “Tranquility Falls” extends these creative inquiries. By presenting an overtly synthetic but strangely evocative pun on a ‘fountain of knowledge’, it questions whether we are informed less by traditional engagements with organised religions and natural wonder, and instead, increasingly reliant on the mechanisms of popular culture for moments of insight and reflection. “Tranquility Falls” has been exhibited internationally at LA Louver Gallery, Venice, California in 2013, and nationally at GBK as part of Art Month Sydney, in 2013, and as part of GOMA Q: Contemporary Art from Queensland at QAGOMA, 2015. It has been critically reviewed in The Los Angeles Times and elsewhere.
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(2015-07-25)Creative Work (non-textual)Dark Mess is a synchronized three-channel video installation with sound. Each video channel presents scenes of rainforest undergrowth, which are shot with an unsettling, ‘floating’ point-of view. As the imagery gradually becomes darker and more rapidly edited, the initially ambient soundtrack also becomes increasingly distorted and menacing. The sequence climaxes with the sound and imagery at full, ear-splitting distortion. Through this unrelenting drive towards abstraction and distortion, Dark Mess evokes an anxious and disturbing psychological environment. Dark Mess contributes to studies in the field of contemporary art. It is especially concerned with the ways that symbolic mediations of the natural environment can be used as a catalyst and proxy for introspection and self-examination. To this end, it explores the potentials of moving image installation and sound to evoke intense and compelling psychological spaces. In the context of moving image art, and visual culture more broadly, Dark Mess questions how the capacity of moving images to engage abstraction and distortion can be a powerful means through which to engage metaphors for explorations of the self. Dark Mess has been exhibited at Boxcopy Contemporary Art Space, Brisbane in 2015. It has also been the subject of critical discussion, including in an essay published to accompany the exhibition at Boxcopy.
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(2011-11-10)Creative Work (non-textual)300 empty houses, lie stranded, floating above the ground on thin piers. They are typical Queensland houses: mining residences, army huts, migrant hostels, school rooms, farm houses and suburban homes. Modest, abandoned, lightly constructed; they offer little privacy. Faint sounds are heard through thin walls; nothing is private. They are always a work in progress, to be cut in half, removed, recycled and remade many times over. Even when placed in a living town, they always seem to be part of a transient camping ground laid out over the country. http://www.johngillies.com/house
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