In August, Adelaide Festival Centre's Moving Image Program is exhibiting 'dís/cerus/site' by Elise Bonato, and 'siren/saudade' by Elise Bonato.
Elise Bonato, dís/cerus/site, moving image, 3 x 30:00 mins & 3 x 05:00 mins
Image: Elise Bonato, dís/cerus/site, high-definition digital video, (still) 3 x 30:00 mins & 3 x 05:00 mins
A transcendent, site-specific video installation created in response to the iconic architectural forms of the Adelaide Festival Centre and its surrounding natural-to-urban environment during the artist’s occupancy as Artist-in-Residence. Incorporating durational performance and presented through moving image, the work seeks to venerate the distinctive beauty of the landscape upon which the Adelaide Festival Centre and Plaza reside, through an otherworldly reimagining of its architectonics. It crystallises at the nexus of the artist’s collective experience within the urban landscape, through spatial embodiment, and the evocations of individuals and communities who have engaged with this place, past and present.
This work was presented as part of SALA Artist-in-Residence Program.
Elise Bonato, siren/saudade, moving image, 11:16 mins
Image: Elise Bonato, siren/saudade, moving image, (still), 11:16 mins
siren/saudade (2016) was first exhibited in May 2016 as part of SUPERNAL at Sawtooth ARI Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania. The work sits within the artist’s experimental art cinema lexicon, exploring the sublime, mysticism, and the metaphysical within contemporary art contexts.
Featuring durational performance interventions and sensorial encounters with isolated landscapes, the work incarnates an interconnection between the lived body and the metaphysical mind. The intention is to activate and channel the liminal ‘other’ space that may exist between these transcendental human states. It explores the potential to evoke within the viewer the sensation of encountering ‘unearthly beauty’ - where the sublime may distort to become otherworldly.
Multidisciplinary visual artist Elise Bonato (Adelaide, AUS) is a practitioner of the visual–aural arcane. Her predominantly experimental practice investigates contemporary notions and interpretations of the sublime and mysticism through a synthesis of moving image, performance, installation, drawing, and painting. Since graduating with First Class Honours from the University of South Australia’s School of Art, Architecture and Design in 2012, she has exhibited locally in Australia (SEVENTH Gallery, Sawtooth ARI, FELTspace) and internationally in the USA (Interstitial Theatre, NARS Foundation). She is the recipient of the Australia Council for the Arts ArtStart Grant, the American Australian Association’s Dame Joan Sutherland Fund, and the Helpmann Academy Grant. In 2015, Elise worked in Brooklyn, NYC, participating in a six-month residency with the New York Art Residency & Studios Foundation.