PEOPLE LIKE US
Please note that the CDU exhibition has now closed. People Like Us will be on exhibition again at Dogwood Crossing, Miles, QLD from the 28th May - 17th July 2018.
Riding a bicycle through Sydney’s streets, interacting with purring cats, and travelling through a virtual bloodstream are not generally what people expect when they visit an art gallery - but that is exactly what awaits at CDU Art Gallery! People Like Us, touring to regional venues all over the country is now on at Casuarina campus and is an exhibition not to miss.
People Like Us is about people, and our place in the contemporary world. Incorporating an array of moving images, interactive digital technologies, atmospheric sounds, and beautiful orchestral music by award-winning Australian and international artists, visitors to the exhibition are engaged the moment they step inside the gallery.
Volker Kuchelmeister and Laura Fisher’s Veloscape, for example, allows participants to ride a stationary bicycle connected to a pre-recorded projection of an interesting (and at times frightening!) ride from Paddington to Rozelle in Sydney, whilst weaving past bemused pedestrians and negotiating busy inner-city bus lanes. The pace of the journey is determined by the pedalling speed of the person on the bike!
John McGhee’s artwork Inside-Topologies of Stroke uses a virtual reality headset to immerse the visitor in the blood vessels of the brain. X-box controls enable swift movement to traverse the 3D renderings of red blood cells and clots as they flow past. McGhee is the Director of the 3D Visualisation Aesthetics Lab at the University of NSW’s National Institute for Experimental Arts, and this work brings together a fascinating amalgam of art, science, and medical data.
George Poonkhin Khut’s Brighthearts is an app that utilises the visitor’s heartbeat, via an ear sensor, to register as pulsating concentric circles and colours on dedicated iPads in the exhibition. The premise of the work - and the challenge for the participant - is to use an awareness of breath to maintain a lowered heart rate, which in turn changes the forms and colours on the iPad and chiming bells via earphones.
Award-winning Luxembourg artist Su-Mei Tse’s work Son pour Insomniaques (Sound for Insomniacs) also aims to create a sense of peace and calm through the reverberating purrs of five different cats. Visitors wear earphones and select the cat they want to hear by pressing a button on one of two stools carefully positioned in front of large face-portraits of each of the five cats. The portraits are a humorous reference to our regard for framed photographs of people (and pets!) that we love.
Notable Australian artists Daniel Crooks, Angelica Mesiti, Joan Ross, and Claire Healey and Sean Cordeiro all deploy innovative filmic methodologies to achieve new ways of looking at and considering the world. Crooks’ splicing of Melbourne’s iconic laneways in A Garden of Parallel Paths plays with notions of ‘place as identity’; Mesiti’s Rapture (Silent Anthem) is a silent slow-motion film of young people enthralled at a music concert; Ross’ The Claiming of Things cleverly uses animation and everyday sounds as a witty and thought-provoking visual narrative of contemporary Australian society; and Healey and Cordeiro’s The Drag uses irony and two separate screens in a video that shows one man doggedly getting his car from A to B in a (perhaps not too distant) future without fuel.
Another work with political undertones is a sound installation titled Syrinx by Australian Aboriginal-Chinese artist Jason Wing, which features native Australian birdsong and recitals in Aboriginal languages.
Italian artist Yuri Ancarani’s short film Da Vinci employs an all-over blue hue, visually linking the sterile surrounds of a hospital operating theatre with the clinical process of a remote-controlled keyhole surgery. The film’s score dramatically builds up as the surgery progresses and the robotic arms performing the surgery seemingly take on a life of their own – a fascinating notion as we consider a future with an increasing AI involvement in our everyday lives.
As though icing on a cake, acclaimed British composer Michael Nyman (renowned for his film scores for The Piano and Gattaca) has created two works in the exhibition: Memorial and The Art of Fugue. Thematically poles apart, both works nonetheless share splendid visual imagery with impressive and poignant soundtracks. It is remarkable how affecting music can be.
A National Exhibitions Touring Support Australia exhibition developed by UNSW Galleries and toured by Museums & Galleries of NSW. The National Touring Initiative is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its principal arts funding body, and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.
Kellie Joswig is the Acting Curator of Charles Darwin University Art Collection and Art Gallery.
