In a ground-breaking project that has been in development over the last three years, Carriageworks has commissioned 24 Australian and international artists, dancers, choreographers and filmmakers to create 24 major new artworks.
Presented from 18 June to 2 August 2015, 24 Frames Per Second is an ambitious exhibition that has been three years in the making. Occupying the nexus between film, dance and the visual arts, the exhibition has been conceived in response to a shift towards interdisciplinary and collaborative experimentation in contemporary artistic practice.
Supported by the Australia Council for the Arts in a significant multi-year partnership with Carriageworks, 24 Frames Per Second was developed to provide Australian artists with the resources and support to create dynamic multidisciplinary installations that traverse film, dance and visual art. As well, it provides an opportunity to present major international and Australian figures working at the forefront of this intersection.
24 Frames Per Second consolidates Carriageworks’ growing national and international reputation for innovation in the making and presentation of contemporary work. ‘We are proud to present the results of three years of experimentation and work by leading artists from across Australia and internationally. This major new initiative continues the Carriageworks commitment to providing uncompromising support of artists and to making risk-taking new work which is both relevant and engaging to audiences locally, nationally and internationally,’ Carriageworks Director Lisa Havilah said.
‘24 Frames Per Second explores the integrated nature of contemporary art practice which, in recent years, has seen dance and live performance infiltrate the institutional spaces of the museum,’ says exhibition co-curator Nina Miall. ‘In addition, the distinctive spaces of Carriageworks offer a platform that exists beyond the dance studio, black box, or white cube’, says exhibition co-curator Beatrice Gralton.
Australia Council Director of Dance, Carin Mistry, adds: ‘Contemporary dance artists explore movement from a range of perspectives – from within the individual body, alongside or in counterpoint with others, in intersections with objects or in relation to abstract concepts. Dance is a fundamentally collaborative medium where connections are made across form, practice and territories. 24 Frames Per Second will provide significant new opportunities for audiences to engage with new works by leading national and international artists.’
Highlights of the exhibition include a new installation by Sydney-based artist Tony Albertand choreographer Stephen Page which looks at the vulnerability and strength of young Aboriginal men.
Melbourne-based choreographer Nat Cursio and video artist Daniel Crooks have collaborated with Australian dance icon Don Asker on a work which offers a meditation on longevity and gathered wisdom, using the formal device of Crooks’ signature ‘time slice’ technique.
Paris-based Australian artist Angelica Mesiti explores the Berber tradition of the Nakhdance from the Algerian/Tunisian border, a ceremonial wedding dance in which the bride’s female attendants thrash their hair to enter a trance-like state.
British choreographer Siobhan Davies and filmmaker David Hinton use the ten-second sprint as their focal point, referencing Eadweard Muybridge’s (1830-1904) celebrated studies of motion in a new film called The Running Tongue, to which 22 independent dance artists have contributed.
Video artist Kate Murphy explores the ageing body and its capacity for physical and echoic memory in a diptych of films which juxtapose challenges to mobility and expression.
Media artist Khaled Sabsabi’s multi-channel video projection explores correspondences between the heightened states of ecstasy and fanaticism exhibited by fans of the Western Sydney Wanderers football team with those performed by an Indonesian shaman.
New Zealand artist Sriwhana Spong uses Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky’s semi-sensical letter ‘To mankind’ as the score for new choreography by London-based dancer Benjamin Ord. This single-channel film explores the slippages between sanity and madness, balance and collapse, language and meaning.
Renowned French dancer François Chaignaud performs a fragile new solo choreography and vocal score to Henry Purcell’s (1659- 1695) baroque piece O solitude: A song upon a ground from 1687. Filmed in Death Valley in California by French filmmaker César Vayssié, the film sees Chaignaud escaping the traditional space of the theatre to be an isolated fugitive amongst the infinite expanse of the desert.
Australian artists commissioned:
Tony Albert and Stephen Page, Branch Nebula with Denis Beaubois, Clare Britton, Jack Prest & Matt Prest, Alison Currie, Nat Cursio and Daniel Crooks, Brian Fuata, Angelica Mesiti, Kate Murphy, James Newitt, Byron Perry and Antony Hamilton, David Rosetzky, Khaled Sabsabi, S. Shakthidharan, Aimee Smith, Sophie Hyde in collaboration with Restless Dance Theatre, Latai Taumoepeau and Elias Nohra, Christian Thompson, Lizzie Thomson, and Vicki Van Hout and Marian Abboud.
International artists commissioned:
François Chaignaud and César Vayssié, Choy Ka Fai, Siobhan Davies & David Hinton (in collaboration with 22 independent dance artists), Ho Tzu Nyen, Sriwhana Spong and Saburo Teshigawara.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.
THANK YOU
Carriageworks is grateful for the support of the following key partners and collaborators on this project: the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts NSW, ABC Arts, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Biennale of Sydney, Bundanon Trust, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Canon, Casula Powerhouse, Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney, Performance Space, School of the Arts and Media UNSW, UNSW Art & Design.