feature story march/april 2019

Guises of love and displacement

In a first for Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, its entire gallery spaces have been dedicated solely to film-based works for the Perth Festival show, Love, Displaced. Six theatres have been created to accommodate seven works, transforming the gallery into surprisingly large multi-spaces. Ted Snell, University of WA Chief Cultural Officer and Director of Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, says each work required its own environment for optimum presentation. “Sound bleed can be a killer in film-based exhibitions…

artist’s chronicle film at desert river sea

In a collaboration between Pilbara and Kimberley Aboriginal Media, Audio Chemistry in Melbourne and the Art Gallery of WA, the Artist’s Chronicle has produced a trailer and short film for the exhibition featuring participating artists, stunning drone shots of the Kimberley landscape, and music by Kimberley favourites, the Pigram Brothers.

in the MARCH/APRIL 2019 edition

The Perth Festival may be officially over, but there is still much to see in its Visual Art Program. At Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, a feast of film-based works offer new insights into navigating the white noise of contemporary life towards a place of re-sensitisation, where real emotional engagement is possible outside the craving for social media and screen-based reactions.

At PICA, Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based transgender artist Cassils presented a powerful performance in a darkened gallery space – physically attacking an enormous piece of clay, while the camera flashes of Italian-born, UK-based photographer Manuel Vason disoriented the audience. Cassils comment on violence recorded photographically by Vason provided the images for an overnight transformation of the gallery.

In contrast, at Fremantle Arts Centre UK-based Australian artist David Noonan aims to lull viewers into his dark and quiet world though film, artworks and physically changing the gallery space experience. Noonan’s A Dark and Quiet Place has an additional component in the FAC bookshop – a book of the same name, its design in response to the work. Included in the book is an essay by Irish-born novelist and critic Brian Dillon, also in response to the work, taking readers on the journey of a fictitious theatre company in apparent preparation for the work.

Our book review covers Nora Heyson: A Portrait by Anne-Louise Willoughby, due to be published by Fremantle Press this April. Overshadowed by her famous father Hans Heyson, Nora struggled to compete with his success. She was the first woman to win the Archibald Prize and the first woman appointed as an official war artist, but was almost forgotten in the story of Australian art until rediscovered in her latter years.     

Lyn Di Ciero

Editor

ARTIST’S CHRONICLE 30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION MARCH 2021