Artbank Video Art Collection Launch
Last month the Minister for the Arts Peter Garrett launched Artbank’s video art collection with the assistance of our new Advisory Board Chairman, Michael Snelling. With distinguished guests from industry, government and clients Artbank was able to showcase the 13 works it now holds in this exciting, relatively new medium.
At the launch we were delighted to be joined by several of the artists in the video art collection – Sam Smith, Kate Blackmore, Alex Prado and Ms & Mr. We’re so grateful to them, and others, for their wonderful works, now being seen by clients across the country.
Beata Geyer’s immersive video Milk City formed our central ‘backdrop’ for the night, with its painterly swirls drawing all into its coloured fields. At the other end of the showroom, people enjoyed seeing Sam Smith’s Video Lens [HJ11x4.7B], which we brought to you in an earlier e-bulletin, our first time-based purchase. This came courtesy of our client Middletons who were very happy to lend it back to us for the night to mark the occasion.
Other works on display included Laith McGregor’s Maturing, a close up of the artist drawing a beard onto his own face to the point of mania; Kate Blackmore’s Chinook starring her twin brother ‘controlling’ a toy helicopter; Jess MacNeil’s The Wall, an ocean pool abstracted by the simple rotation of the picture plane; Hayden Fowler’s Goat Odyssey, with its two gilded goats in a sterile space worlds reminiscent of Kubrick, and Dorota Mytch’s remarkable Reading 1, in which she recreates historical photographs, ‘drawn’ with tea leaves, forming and re-forming in a continuous loop. Also shown was one of the Intersection
pieces by key video figure Daniel Crooks, a work that expresses the very experiential nature of time; Ms & Mr's work which draws on cultural fantasies of romance using their own personal film archives; and Bus Stop, where Alex Prado allows the slow and repetitive rhythm of city life to emerge.
Rushed to us just in time for our launch was Dreams, a beautiful and poignant portrait of four street performers, created in Los Angeles when James Newitt – recently awarded the Qantas Foundation Encouragement of Australian Contemporary Art Award for Tasmania – was an Australia Council studio resident.
Artbank is excited to be able to offer these works and welcomes the opportunity to discuss the opportunity of renting digital art with new and existing clients.
Jackie Dunn
Senior Curator
Images: Rozalyn Sharp
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