Year: 2009

Medium: video

Exhibited:
Winner, Artist’s self portrait prize, UQ Gallery, Brisbane
Gyeonggi Museum, Soeul, Korea
Jakarta Biennale, Jakarta, Indonesia
McClelland Gallery, Melbourne
Lismore Regional Gallery, Lismore, NSW
Roslyn Oxley Gallery, Sydney
Volume 1, MCA, Sydney

Press Release:
This video work, as moving image, suggests time as infinite through the technique of the loop. The ‘unknown’ in this work is the mystery behind the action or affect that the subject (the artist/self) undergoes. It is difficult to determine whether this person / this face, is responding to something outside or inside themselves. Are they undergoing something or perceiving something? The work is about “the things that are outside of us, our bodies, what happens inside of us and what happens to us.” These qualities provide an entry point for the viewer to engage and question.

There is a ‘leap into the void’ that this work, ‘360° Self-portrait’, asks of the viewer, which finds its equivalent in the famous photographic image by Yves Klein, ‘La peinture de l’espace se jette dans le vide’, 1960. This image ‘appears’ to document the artist leaping from a balcony or rooftop into the street below. Caught in mid flight, his image remains forever in a state of suspension. This image is also caught within history as an open question, one where the photograph acts as proof, but cultivates doubt.

This paradox resonates in ‘360° Degree Self-Portrait’ where time and movement ‘appear’ suspended within the intensity of presence.