Shotgun 9 was awarded to Alex Davern. The artist has undertaken a customised development program with new work produced during the program launched at CAT Gallery on 30 April, 2021. In The clouds have cameras Davern examined the luminosity of spaces through the design and construction of a multimedia installation which incorporates rhythm, language, real versus imagined space and immersive colour.
Commissioned texts by Max Delany and Michaela Gleave accompanied the exhibition.
The clouds have cameras
A long, narrow corridor leads to a dead end, with a view. An orange tinted window with venetian blinds casts a striated, noirish glow. We return down the same corridor which issues into a darkened gallery, with a pulsating, flickering pink light: FISH SHOP. A cinematic space almost synthetic in its plasticity and augmented backlit glow. There are a series of digital prints, one of which lends its name to the exhibition: The clouds have cameras. These augmented landscapes are composed of urban fragments: a surveillance camera with a smiley face, an architectural awning, two glowing neon tubes, a handrail, a tooth hovering in space, an advertisement announcing $10 dinners, and a sign which reassures us that ‘everything is fine’.
But everything isn’t fine. There’s a car doing burnouts, in a single-channel video on a flatscreen. Orange, with wheels of glistening chrome. Its wheel turns at high speed, tricking the eye, like a propeller spinning, backwards. The car is going nowhere. Spinning wheels at full speed but going nowhere. A fog of smoke takes over the scene. Probably toxic. The soundtrack delivers the room an existential, industrial hum. The video is endless – endlessly spinning, looping, like Beckett waiting for Godot, only to be interrupted by a glitch, by the spinning rainbow wheel of death. Buffering. It’s painful to watch, slowing down time to an almost unbearable, dreaded existence.
Max Delany - excerpt
Read full Max Delany SHOTGUN 9 text
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I like the idea of personal structures.
They are definitely personal,
but I feel like it's universal.
I let people come to the works
and make their own associations with objects
and symbols
and space.
I enjoy that they will interpret that differently than I have.
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It’s about creating voids of space.
You have a little detail that you can focus on,
but I want you to be washed with colour and space...
that feeling of it just sort of covering you,
you're in that dimension.
Conceptually it’s infinite.
It goes nowhere.
It's just magic.
And it keeps growing.
Michaela Gleave – excerpt
This text is based on a conversation between Alex Davern and program mentor Michaela Gleave that occurred on 28 February 2021. The passwords accompany Alex Davern's video work, BURNOUT.
Read full Michaela Gleave SHOTGUN 9 text
Buy the SHOTGUN 9 catalogue on the Contemporary Art Tasmania website.
IMAGE: Alex Davern, The clouds have cameras, 2020. Digital render, dimensions variable.