VIDEO 2025

VIDEO 2025 is curated by Rachel Ciesla, Curator for the Art Gallery of Western Australia’s Simon Lee Foundation Institute of Contemporary Asian Art (Boorloo/Perth).

Don’t Live in the Future presents six videos that delve into the emotional and perceptual resonance of images. The liminal, reductive and appropriative constructive strategies employed in these works accumulate – evoking a sense of immortality as they are archived in human history, reaching out to, and reached at by, so many others.

Cut from one seductive, unsettling, revelatory frame to another: does this sequence of images make you self-conscious? All of us just wanting to exist beyond our time. Acutely aware that nothing in life has any meaning except that which you assign to it. What if you let go—let go, let really go? No one owes you anything. There’s no shame IN life’s misfortunes. Your history is perfect so don’t look now. Don’t give in to nostalgia. Forget us all.

Balance your desire to transform with your need to be understood, or else, kill me in this maze of endless deferment. It isn’t always possible to think before you speak—sometimes, the only way out is through. Don’t come back, don’t come see me. I won’t let you in my house. Understand?

Artists include Destiny Deacon (KuKu and Erub/Mer) and Erin Hefferon, presented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (Gadigal Country/Sydney); Sara Cwynar presented by Cooper Cole (Toronto); Oliver Laric presented by Tanya Leighton (Berlin, Los Angeles); Ceal Floyer presented by Esther Schipper (Berlin, Paris, Seoul); and Tong Wenmin, presented by White Space (Beijing) in association with Videotage (Hong Kong).

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are advised that this pages contains the name of a person who has died.
Image: Tülay Dincel.

Destiny Deacon and Erin Hefferon 

No place like home, 1999 
single-channel digital video (colour, sound)
3 min 55 sec 
Edition of 15 

No place like home is an early video work created by Destiny Deacon in collaboration with West Australian performance artist Erin Hefferon. It shows a woman clothed in a red gingham dress walking slowly along a shadowy road in Perth’s King’s Park. Seeming calm and resolute despite her precarious circumstances, the woman’s journey is punctuated by the twinkling headlights of passing cars; these intermittently illuminate road signs while the streetlights bathe her surroundings in a ruby glow to form a hallucinatory scene of eerie tension and hopeless optimism.

The soundtrack features a piano recording of Over the Rainbow that was written for the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. This haunting melody is interspersed with audio samples of Judy Garland’s character, Dorothy, calling after Toto, and speaking the phrase ‘There’s no place like home’, which the movie famously popularised. Filmed shortly after the Claremont serial killings – a high-profile case involving the disappearance and murder of three women in Perth between 1996 and 1997, all of whom were making their way home – the video’s uneasy sound, shaky camera movements and pervasive sense of being watched by an unseen menace connects those events with the insidious terror of Australia’s systemic racism, sexism and homophobia. Collapsing time and space Deacon warned that such dangers are certainly not left in the past.

Destiny Deacon (1957–2024), a descendant of the KuKu and Erub/Mer people, is widely recognised as one of Australia’s most innovative multidisciplinary artists. Emerging in the early 1990s, her work is distinguished by its humorous vocabulary, incisive political commentary and performative approach to the use of the camera. Through her practice, Deacon deftly explored the complex interplay between language, identity and power, crafting richly layered narratives that challenged social and cultural norms while resonating with personal and collective histories.
Deacon’s thirty year career saw her achieve significant national and international recognition, with a major retrospective DESTINY at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne in 2020 and representation in the Biennale of Sydney (2024, 2008, 2000), Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023), 10th Havana Biennial (2009), Documenta 11 (2002), Yokohama Triennale (2001), 2nd Asia-Pacific Triennial (1996), and the 1st Johannesburg Biennale (1995). Her work is held in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; Museum Sammlung Essl; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and the Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, among others.

Represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (Gadigal Country/Sydney), Booth D1.

Destiny Deacon and Erin Hefferon, No place like home (still), 1999, single-channel digital video, 3 mins 55 seconds, edition of 15.

Oliver Laric

Untitled, 2014–2015 
4K video (colour, sound)
5 min 55 sec
Edition of 5 + 2 AP

Untitled is an animated video by Oliver Laric in which humans, animals and objects continuously come into being. Using the history of animation as his source material, Laric redraws scenes of metamorphosis,, as well as fan art, and combines these images with commissioned illustrations, digital drawings and 3D renderings by other graphic artists. The result is a striking succession of figurative forms in constant states of bodily transformation, hybridisation and disintegration. Accompanied by a soundtrack of brooding synths and a disconcerting piano rendition of Justin’s Timberlake’s 2002 song Cry Me a River the video explores the circulatory and acceleratory potentials of the subject to recreate itself in new and ever-evolving ways.

Oliver Laric (b. 1981, Innsbruck; lives and works Berlin) is a multimedia artist whose videos, sculptures and installations question ideas of authorship, originality and authenticity in historic and contemporary visual cultures. Using strategies of appropriation and iconoclasm, often humorously applied, Laric’s work collapses categorisations to show how the meaning ascribed to images and objects is in a constant state of renewal. Scans of Laric’s works are available for free download on his website threedscans.com, expanding the range of materials available for others to creatively adapt and share.

Laric has recently presented solo exhibitions at the Musée de la Romanité, Nîmes (2023); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2021); S.M.A.K., Ghent (2021). His work has also been included in group presentations at UCCA Lab, Shanghai (2024); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2024); KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin (2024); and CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain de Bordeaux (2023). Laric’s work is held in the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Cleveland Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Fondation Galleries Lafayette, Paris and KAI 10 I Arthena Foundation, Düsseldorf, among many others.

Presented by Tanya Leighton (Berlin, Los Angeles).

Image courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton.

Tong Wenmin

Wave, 2019
performance Dinawan, Malaysia
single channel video (colour, silent)
19 min 46 sec

Filmed during a residency on Dinawan Island in Malaysia, Tong Wenmin’s durational performance and video, Wave, is a succession of surging forms enacted by the body and the sea. Face down in the sea, water flooding her nostrils as her limbs draw a series of shapes with the waves, Tong destabilises the romanticised notion of a pure, unadulterated communion with nature. By subjecting herself to relentless rhythms of the sea, Tong highlights the profound entanglement of human and more-than-human life the work suggests that neither exists in isolation but rather through constant interaction and mutual influence.

Tong Wenmin is a leading voice in the new generation of contemporary Chinese artists. Using her body as a living sculpture, Tong creates captivating images that propose new, diverse, and even contradictory understandings of the human. Born in 1989 in Chongqing, China, where she continues to live and work, Tong received a BFA from the Oil Painting Department at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2012. Following her graduation, Tong shifted her practice to focus upon performance art, developing one of the most conceptually rigorous and physically demanding bodies of work in this medium.

Tong’s work has received extensive international recognition, participating in exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; M+, Hong Kong; Salzburg Museum der Moderne; HE ART MUSEUM, Foshan; OCAT Shenzhen; Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; and A4 Art Museum, Chengdu.

Presented by White Space (Beijing) in association with Videotage (Hong Kong).

Tong Wenmin, Artwork Still. Image courtesy of the artist and gallery.

Sara Cwynar

Red Film, 2018
16mm film transferred to high-definition video (colour, sound)
13 min 1 sec

Sara Cwynar’s Red Film is a compelling exploration of beauty, capitalism and desire. The third film in a trilogy that includes Soft Film (2016) and Rose Gold (2017), the work uses the colour red to create a visual thread linking the endless circulation of objects and images – from a red 1980s convertible to Cézanne jewellery boxes and Comme des Garçons clothing – with questions about truth, value and the mutability of meaning. Language also plays a central role in the form of an enigmatic narration voiced by Cwynar herself. This voice-over, composed of fragmented quotes from influential thinkers like Adorno, Barthes, Descartes and Lacan, underscores the pervasive illusion of choice within the visual culture of capitalism. Cwynar describes this linguistic element as language being reproduced like objects in a factory; ideas and theories become emptied of meaning in relentless cycles of reproduction and standardisation.

Sara Cwynar (b. 1985, Vancouver; lives and works New York) is interested in the way that images accumulate, endure, and change in value over time. Her conceptual photographs and films involve constant archiving and re-presentation of collected visual materials, layering diverse imagery with references to art theory. The works intricately recall advertisements, retail catalogues, and old art history textbooks. Her visual assemblages meditate on how vernacular images shape collective world views, and how those ideals can change through time and contextual manipulation.

Cwynar earned her Bachelor of Design from York University in 2010 and her MFA from Yale University in 2016. She was one of the recipients of the 2020 Sobey Art Award, the 2020 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and the 2021 Shpilman Photography Prize. Cwynar has exhibited at the ICA Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; MoMA PS1, New York; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; and the Fondazione Prada, Milano. Her work is held in the Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Dallas Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Milwaukee Art Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others.

Presented by Cooper Cole (Toronto).

Sara Cwynar, Red Film Promotional Still. Image courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole.

Ceal Floyer

Plughole, 2017
video-projection (colour, sound)
3 min 53 sec
Edition of 3

In Ceal Floyer’s Plughole, a static camera is obsessively focused on a six-hole bathroom sink drain. The video depicts a stream of water being redirected to fill each hole perfectly, one by one, using the faucet’s flow. The drain’s function as a receptacle for water becomes a kind of short-circuit, as water itself becomes the material that plugs its own pathway. By subjecting familiar objects to simple yet profound functional inversions that become semiotic inversions too, Floyer playfully reroutes conventional patterns of perception. Her works serve as productive irritations that use their inherent logic to prompt an open process of seeing and thinking.

Ceal Floyer (b. 1968, Karachi; lives and works Berlin) creates ultra-minimal multimedia works that build upon the history and language of conceptual art. By activating entirely logical, yet overlooked, associations from familiar objects, Floyer’s uncanny gestures resuscitate our experience of the everyday. Slight alterations to found objects (a hairbrush, the sign for an emergency exit, or the projection of an image of a nail, for instance) create often surprising interventions that heighten the awareness of our surroundings.

Floyer studied at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 2006, she was nominated for the Nam June Paik Award and in 2007, for the Berlin-based Preis der Nationalgalerie für junge Kunst. She has recently held solo exhibitions at Base Progetti per l‘Arte, Florence (2022-23); goeben Berlin (2021); Y8 Kunstraum, Hamburg (2020); Kunsthal 44Møen, Askeby (2019); University of Michigan Museum of Art (2019); and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2018–2019). Floyer participated in Manifesta 11 (2016), dOCUMENTA 13 (2012), and in the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). Her work has been acquired by the following collections: Tate Modern, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Sammlung Zeitgenössische Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Berlin; Denver Art Museum; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

Presented by Esther Schipper (Berlin, Paris, Seoul).

Ceal Floyer, Plughole (still), 2017. Courtesy of Esther Schipper.

Paul Pfeiffer

Caryatid (Mayweather), 2023
digital video (colour, silent)
1 min 8 sec

Caryatid (Mayweather) is part of Paul Pfeiffer’s ongoing Caryatid series, begun in 2004, in which he manipulates video footage of sporting events —sites of mass spectacle that intertwine the dramatic narratives of sports and religion. In this piece, Pfeiffer digitally erases Floyd Mayweather’s opponent from a boxing match to shift the focus entirely onto Mayweather’s solitary body. This erasure creates a palpable psychological resonance as the remaining boxer is cast into a tense, torpid solo performance. The absence of an adversary magnifies obscure physical details, emphasising the brutality of each impact and the visceral toll off an unseen assault.

The title Caryatid references the sculpted female figures of Ancient Greek temples, drawing a parallel between these architectural elements and the structures of racialised violence embedded in contemporary society. By using the familiarity and populism of spectator sports, Pfeiffer delves into the interplay between images, power struggles and social legitimisation. While the repetitive logic inherent to both boxing and the work’s looping structure mirrors the circulation of this violence via digital technologies and social media platforms. In doing so, he questions how the digital circulation of images of racialised violence normalises violence against oppressed groups. By exposes the uncanny emptiness underneath these well-known images, Pfeiffer renders the violence undeniable, forcing us to confront what is often repressed, with the hope of making it not only visible but intolerable.

Paul Pfeiffer (b.1966, Honolulu; lives and works New York) is a groundbreaking multimedia artist known for his incisive exploration of the pop culture image. Working across video, photography, sculpture, and installation, Pfeiffer’s practice examines the relations between mass media, consumer technology and globalisation, offering critical insights into how images shape our perception and experience of the world.

Pfeiffer is the subject of a major retrospective, Prologue to the Story of the Birth of Freedom (2023-2025), organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and travelling to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. His work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Inhotim Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Inhotim, Brazil; the Pinault Collection, Venice; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; K21, Dusseldorf; Julia Stoscheck Foundation, Dusseldorf and Berlin; and Pinothek der Moderne and Sammlung Goetz, Munich.

Presented by THOMAS DANE GALLERY (London, Naples).

Paul Pfeiffer Caryatid (Mayweather), video still. Courtesy the artists and Thomas Dane Gallery.