SQUARE2
SQUARE2
SQUARE2 is a dedicated site for moving image artworks located at the entrance way to City Gallery Wellington. SQUARE2—a pun on the site’s location in the Civic Square—presents an injection of energetic and interesting new work by local, national, and international video artists. The moving image artworks displayed in SQUARE2 play continuously, allowing audiences to experience the artwork 24 hours a day.
Currently on show:
SHORT SUITE, a compilation featuring:
Omnipus Collective, Zach and Sam Webber, Pedes Silicis, 2008
Gordon Nelson, Thooth, 2004
Emit Snakebeings, Death of an Orchestra, 2008
Rebecca Pilcher, Dolly, 2004
Sheilah Wilson, Magique, Magique ll, 2008
7 July — 3 August 2008
DVD
duration: 13 mins 33 sec, looped
Courtesy of the artists
These five short films explore the territory of the uncanny, the strange or surreal. The artists address this theme in a range of ways, from bizarre narrative to lyrical composition of static image and soundscape. A coin operated mechanical orchestra meet their demise when a disgruntled customer objects to their money making scheme in Emit Snakebeing’s Death of An Orchestra; in the Omnipus Collective’s work a benign-looking monster tip-toe dances across the screen to the accompaniment of otherworldly music.
Gordon Nelson’s Thooth and Rebecca Pilcher’s Dolly are both set in an eerie, medical realm. Dolly dwells on the banal yet nightmarish potential of a seemingly eternal ride down the hospital ward corridor. In Thooth experimental filmmaker Gordon Nelson appropriates a sequence of images from an old medical text on dental procedures to create a ghastly animated slideshow about the dread many of us experience at the thought of a visit to the dentist. The soundtrack consists of the same three notes in various combinations.
The evocative potential of these works is condensed in two brief pieces by Sheilah Wilson, Magique, Magique ll. In the first, the desire for immortality in art is translated to poetic spoof, a wistful refrain sung in French. In the second, the author plays ghost with a bed sheet, maintaining a commitment to the lo-fi, humorous conundrum of how to present oneself to the camera.
The Omnipus Collective consists of Sam and Zach Webber. The brothers live in Wellington, and work across a range of visual and sonic media. Currently the artists are exploring the mixing of static images with live video.
Gordon Nelson is an independent filmmaker from Pittsburgh, Pennysylvania. He acts as a Film Curator at the Carnegie Museum of Art and an Adjunct Professor at Pittsburgh Filmmakers. Nelson is co-founder of Jefferson Presents, an organisation devoted to showing independent short films. He continues to experiment with the technical and visual aspects of the medium, and his films have been screened locally and internationally.
Emit Snake-Beings is a Hamilton-based experimental filmmaker and musician who has produced over 40 independently released film soundtracks, and made a number of short films. After completing a joint degree in computer graphic design and film studies, Emit has moved towards 'material' animation; recently working with the Hamilton-borne robot band The Trons to produce their first music video.
Rebecca Pilcher has recently graduated with an MFA (Hons) from Massey University School of Fine Arts in Wellington, where she also spent time as a tutor. Her time-based works involve video, sound and highly mediated or digitally manipulated environments. The familiar and prosaic are altered through the recording, with traces of this process often present in the completed work.
Sheilah Wilson completed her MFA at Goldsmiths College (London) in 2004. She has exhibited her performance, photographic and video work in Canada, the USA, England, Japan and Israel. Wilson will be teaching Photography and New Media at St. Mary's University in South Bend, Indiana in 2008/9.