In May, Adelaide Festival Centre's Moving Image Program is exhibiting 'Bound and Unbound: Sovereign Acts II' by Unbound Collective, 'River Torrens' by Callum McGrath, 'Adrift’ by Salar Niknafs, and 'Everyday' by James Murphy.
Unbound Collective, Bound and Unbound: Sovereign Acts II, moving image, 12:34 mins
The Unbound Collective comprises Ali Gumillya Baker (curator), Simone Ulalka Tur, Faye Rosas Blanch, and Natalie Harkin.
Ali Gumillya Baker shifts the colonial gaze through film, performance, projection, and grandmother stories. Simone Ulalka Tur’s performance and poetics enact the intergenerational transmission of storywork through education. Faye Rosas Blanch engages with rap theory to embody sovereignty and the shedding of colonial skin. Natalie Harkin’s archival poetics are informed by blood-memory, haunting, and grandmother stories.
Image: Unbound Collective, Bound and Unbound: Sovereign Acts II, moving image, (still), 12:34 mins
Callum McGrath, River Torrens, moving image, 8:00 mins
River Torrens (2017) was filmed on the banks of the Torrens River in Adelaide, at the exact site where gay academic Dr George Duncan was allegedly murdered in 1972. The video, which runs for eight minutes, plays on a seamless loop. Duncan’s alleged murder by three police officers - who were never charged - was a catalyst for homosexual law reform in Australia.
The video depicts the rippling water, rendered in a pink hue, abstracting the University Bridge above. This visual references the water photographs of queer Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Gonzalez-Torres is important to the work in the same way Duncan is, in that I inherited their history of pain and suffering through queer lineage - a lineage not passed down through blood, but through cultural inheritance. The work can be interpreted as a contemporary elegy, lamenting an often-forgotten history of queer suffering. River Torrens generates a dialogue on the importance and problems of cultural inheritance, creating a work that speaks to the complexities of identity and representation.
Utilising screen-based media, my practice ‘disidentifies’ binary representation of queer male sexuality. The work disrupts representations of sexuality by exploring the in-between space in queer male identity. Predominately focused on video, my work is influenced by queer history as a process of cultural inheritance, yet it challenges this process by representing queerness on the screen in a constant state of flux.
I completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual Art) with First Class Honours at Queensland University of Technology in 2016 and have exhibited both locally and interstate. Recent exhibitions include Passing, West Space, Melbourne; HATCHED, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth; Rose Tinted, FELTspace, Adelaide; and Site (re) Constructed, Bus Projects, Melbourne. In 2016, I was awarded the Eyeline Prize for an Outstanding Visual Arts Graduate.
Image: Callum McGrath, River Torrens, moving image, (still), 8:00 mins
Salar Niknafs, Adrift, moving image, 3:30 mins
We came whirling
out of nothingness
scattering stars
like dust
the stars made a circle
and in the middle
we dance
The music of Adrift is a simple generative system, built around unsynchronised melodic passages to create a constantly changing wash in B minor. Electric guitar recordings are accompanied with field recordings and undercurrent drones to create a non-linear immersive listening that slowly drifts in and out of phase.
Video footages are of a ceremonial parade in Ubud, and a Pahlevani ritual at a Zurkhaneh (or Zoorkhaneh; English: ‘House of Strength’) in the historical city of Yazd, in Iran. Pahlevans are performing the whirling exercise (Persian: Charkh), which is believed to be derived from the Sama dance of whirling dervishes.
Video and Music by Salar Niknafs
Single Channel HD Video, Stereo Sound
Edition 1, Duration: 3:30
Aug 2016, Tehran/Melbourne
Image: Salar Niknafs, Adrift, moving image, (still), 3:30 mins
James Murphy, Everyday, moving image, 1:49 mins
Current practice involves a lens-based study of the everyday. It highlights the quotidian rituals that form the foundation of our hopeful longings. These video meditations - of simple human movement against static objects - are rendered in monochrome, with the intent of returning attention to the everyday that has been overlooked.
Image: James Murphy, Everyday, moving image, (still), 1:49 mins