VIDEO Presented by SUBTYPE
Curated by Nina Miall, Curator of International Art at QAGOMA, VIDEO presented by SUBTYPE offers an astounding view of contemporary works in the field of moving image. The Fair welcomes for the first time participation from international galleries unable to physically exhibit within the main show sector, enabling Australian audiences access to the world’s most exciting video artists working today.
By Nina Miall, Curator VIDEO 2022
Curator of International Art at QAGOMA
Inaugurated for the 2022 Melbourne Art Fair, VIDEO features new directions in contemporary moving image practice as they are being explored by emerging and established artists from around the world. The single-channel works selected for this year’s fair represent some of the boldest, most imaginative expressions of media art, conveying a sense of the remarkable breadth and depth for current experiments with the medium. In recognition of the fact that durational and time-based media are often ill-served by art fairs, whose bright lights and visual and auditory noise take on a particular intensity, VIDEO is presented as a dedicated showcase to encourage a different, more sustained form of engagement among the Fair’s audience.
Invited to respond to the notion of ‘place’, the thematic premise of the Fair’s 2022 edition, Australian and international artists have made works which reflect on the cumulative and lasting impressions left on us by our situated experiences in the world. These works traverse a rich heterogeneity of terrain, navigating environments that are natural, constructed and imaginary, from everyday domestic settings to the uncanny labyrinths of the subconscious. They make visible the unique topographies of these internal and external landscapes through a range of techniques and technologies, including stop motion cinematography, claymation, and computer simulation. Drawing on the languages of documentary photography, experimental film, advertising, video gaming and instructional video-making, they offer excavations of place, both actual and virtual, sublime, and surreal.
Many contemporary artists working today feel compelled to respond to the urgencies of climate change and our unfolding environmental crisis. Among the lines of enquiry in the video works on display are reflections on the increasingly fraught symbiosis between humanity and nature and the need for relations of synergy, intimacy, and co-existence over ones of expenditure, extraction, and atomisation. A reverence for the abiding materiality and cultural significance of the land is an enduring thread in a number of these works, expressed with particular eloquence in First Nations’ perspectives on place which derive from a deep-seated sense of custodianship. Through an ongoing project to decolonise Country, these artists are working to recover stories of place, and to re-centre absent and forgotten narratives.
Absorbing and affecting, the moving image works selected for VIDEO transport the viewer from the hyperreal environments of late capitalist society to remote natural landscapes that few people have ever visited. They examine the singular history, geology and culture of place in ways which take account its past uses, present traces, and future incarnations. In so doing, they offer myriad perspectives on different ways of being in the world, and how we might imagine, and then enact, sustainable futures.
JACOBUS CAPONE l MOORE CONTEMPORARY
NATHALIE DJURBERG & HANS BERG l LISSON GALLERY
LARESA KOSLOFF l SUTTON GALLERY
JENNA LEE l MARS GALLERY
GABRIELLA MANGANO & SILVANA MANGANO l ANNA SCHWARTZ GALLERY
DOMINIC MANGILA l THE DRAWING ROOM
TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN l JAMES COHAN
MICHAEL RAKOWITZ l JANE LOMBARD GALLERY
HIRAKI SAWA l JAMES COHAN
GRANT STEVENS l SULLIVAN + STRUMPF
JAMES TYLOR l VIVIEN ANDERSON GALLERY
Image (top): Laresa Kosloff, Radical Acts, 2020, 4K video, 7:29 duration. Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery
SUBTYPE’s vision is to create a minimalist boutique that acts as a gallery and destination for premium sneakers and apparel, where their collection is curated based on exclusivity, creativity, and innovation. Their range looks to blur the lines between fashion and street.
They match these assortments with progressive store designs and immersive retail experiences and are a destination for exclusive products and releases from desirable brands.
With stores in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Auckland and Wellington, their curated gallery also acts as a hub for emerging talent, with an immersive environment titled ‘SUB:SPACE’ in their Melbourne store that will host both local and international artists through 2022 and beyond.
