Charlotte Dayy

Peter Hill

The Albury Wodonga Superfiction 1993

Collaboration Peter Hill and J.J. Voss (Photographer)

Peter Hill: The Centre for Contemporary Photography is mounting several
exhibitions in 2000 that relate to what might be described as "art and
photo-fictions". Was this something you planned, or is it merely indicative
of the current interests of contemporary artists?

Charlotte Day: The CCP's exhibition program aims to illustrate the
pervasive influence of photography on all art forms and across a myriad of
environments. 2000's part focus on "photo-fictions" reflects broader
dialogues relating to photography and image making generally.

PH: I'd like to start by talking about David Rosetzky and his video
portraits. I know he's interested in a non-hierarchical investigation of art
and has described his work as "conflating aspects of contemporary culture
such as fashion, pop music, therapy, design, and décor."
CD: I see him as characteristic of a number of younger artists who are
interested in the oscillations between the public and the private self and
"lifestyle" as an influential cultural indicator in affluent societies. For
the past five years or so David
has been involved in making "performative portraits",
using video, still photography and installation elements. His work is
distinctly slick, drawing on pop and minimalist aesthetics intrinsic to the
fabrication of fashion and star status. In fact it is often difficult to
distinguish his material from its sources in fashion, music and celebrity
cultures. The viewer is made complicit in the experience of engaging with
this work, at once seduced by its restrained glamour and critically aware
of the influence of surface appearance. So I suppose his work is about the
meeting of different fictions with notions of identity.

PH: Can you describe what he does with his video portraits?

CD: The video portraits feature everyday people - often friends or
acquaintances of the artist - who reveal through their actions,
conversations and attire the make up of their personalities. In the series
including Luke (1998) and Sarah (1998), the sitters are filmed up close,
against a monochrome background and their monologues are accompanied by a
subtle ambient sound track. Applying a fashion shoot/corporate video
aesthetic to "real life" documentary emphasises the sitters' aspirations
for individuality combined with their assimilation to media stereotypes. In
a related video and print-based work Society Lite (1997-98) the
protagonists look excruciatingly cool but appear permanently confined to
the white cube of a Calvin Klein CK One World. David's new body of work,
planned for CCP, will involve longer video sequences which can be viewed
both individually and collectively, as the different works will be both
conceptually and physically integrated. The four individuals featured will
at times be silent and will also talk in turn, replicating a conversation
amongst friends. Topics will correspond and interrelate, focusing upon
"life issues" such as personal aspirations and ethics, and a common desire
for connectivity with the world at large.

PH: Does he prefer to use video projectors or monitors in these works?

CD: David usually presents the video portraits on monitors placed within
installations of furniture and designer props with lifestyle references.
There are obvious analogies to retail visual displays and concept
packaging. David likes the human scale of the monitor, its domestic
associations and the way it can draw the viewer into a direct dialogue. The
video loop is also used to effect as individuality is replayed ad infinitum.
On a number of occasions he has also incorporated head-sets for the sound
element as a way of further drawing the spectator/listener into the piece.

PH: Eliza Hutchison is showing at CCP early in the year. She is also
interested in identity and how it can be threaded through fictional
situations.

CD: Eliza's "Bohemian Powder Puff" explores the artist/
Bohemian identity as a fashion and lifestyle construct. It plays with
notions of artistic inspiration/aspiration and references the performative
nature of contemporary documentary photography and film by artists such as
Nan Goldin and Larry Clark. Like David Roseztky, Eliza is interested in the
propagation of ideas across art forms and different popular media such as
music, design, film and fashion. In the installation at the CCP, a
photographic storyboard documents the "behind-the-scenes" of a fashion
shoot capturing the creation of a bohemian tableau - from make up,
dressing, set design and crew manoeuvres - climaxing with a scene of the
two models, their backs arched and hair flying, seemingly liberated through
their physical transformation. Two video monitors show edited footage of
the production accompanied by the sound track "Stratofear" by Tangerine
Dream (1978). The work documents the creation of a particular look -
decidedly now but also retro - part 90s chinois, 80s goth, and 70s glam
rock/performance art. Eliza works with the cyclical nature of fashion and
ideas, where identities are created then dispersed and must be constantly
reinvented. She examines the ways individuals situate themselves within the
media landscape.

PH: Has this been a long-term concern?

CD: You could say much of her work critically examines a "feminised self".
In an earlier work "Interview with Shade" (1996) Eliza created a fetishised
feminine ideal through skimpy leather clothing which hung seductively or
discarded on a clothes rail in a roughly painted beige room. Another
installation of cleaning objects and cleaning equipment was quite blatantly
about the shifts between masculine desires and feminine identities, with the
feminine often revealed by its absence.

PH: The third artist I would like to talk about is Martine Corompt.

CD: Martine's practice is multi-faceted encompassing video, animation,
sculpture, installation and sound. She is also strongly influenced by
various popular cultures particularly the iconography of computer hardware
and software, video games and cartoon characters. Martine critically
evaluates notions of interactivity, and the relationship between
technologies and spectatorship. She's particularly interested in the
dimensions of a cute aesthetic. She made a CD Rom called 'The Cute Machine'
(1997) in which the user could generate a cute baby-like head that became
more and more cute until it ended up being horrific. So you could go up and
down the cute barometer. She often works in collaboration with other
artists. In "Dodg'Em" (1999) she designed life-size dodgem cars which are
peddled around in the gallery space and depending on where they go trigger
different sounds.

PH: What is she planning for the Centre for Contemporary Photography?

CD: Martine is writing a love song that adheres to the stylistic
conventions of the pop song. She is interested in the familiarity and
pathos of a well loved song, the way the identity of the singer mingles
with the song, melding authenticity with fiction. At the CCP she will
create an animation to lip sync to the love song. The animation will be a
stylised iconic representation of a person played on a monitor suspended in
the gallery, probably at eye level. It will sing Martine's love song over
and over contemplating its own vicarious existence. She is creating a
fictional identity that is part human, part machine.

PH: A lot of the artists we've been talking about use video as well as still
photography, and some only use video. What do you feel about a photography
gallery, and I know this happens globally, showing video and new media, and
even installation work? Should you all be thinking of a name change, or a
return to only showing the still image, or is it just a tangle that will
sort itself out over time?

CD: I don't see it necessarily as a tangle but rather as a healthy
evolution over the fifteen years of CCP's operation, as the status of
photography has advanced considerably and artists have adopted a more fluid
relationship with various media. Where photography's legitimacy as art was
once questioned, it is now recognised as the most highly influential
contemporary practice effecting the reception of every other media. CCP has
always focussed on the idea of photography as well as its various forms,
and it is strategically positioned to provide a critical context for the
reception of a broad range of photo-related contemporary practices. So the
CCP has an expanded field of inquiry.

PH: Even inclusive of painting?

CD: Yes, there was an exhibition at the CCP about four years ago called
'After Image' that was about painting photography. There are also
interesting parallels between video and painting and of course painting
remains a crucial reference point for many artists working with photography.

PH: Apart from the photographers and video artists who you are showing at
the CCP this year, who else interests you in terms of constructed fictions?

CD: Mathew Bradley in Adelaide has done some interesting work,
particularly a piece relating to the history of TAA (Trans Australian
Airlines). Christopher Chapman wrote about it in "Gold Card 1" and parts
were exhibited in the 1999 Primavera exhibition at the MCA. "The Nola Rose
Candidate" (1998) is nostalgic for the friendly face of flight technology
and demonstrates our attachment to people and values which are essentially
corporate entities. In Melbourne, there's a dynamic group called DAMP, who
work independently and have also completed a number of projects with Geoff
Lowe and Jaqui Riva for A Constructed World. In August '99 at 200 Gertrude
Street DAMP presented a show called "Punchline". Arranged in the front
space were various party props and big cardboard letters spelling out DAMP.
Throughout the evening of the opening a number of situations occurred
between people amongst this constructed environment. Some of them were DAMP
members and others were actors that they'd employed to conduct the
scenarios. I didn't witness every incident, but one was a kind of domestic
dispute between a couple. In another, a TV monitor was dropped and smashed.
Over the evening there were
feelings of anxiety and anticipation building up amongst the preview
visitors. The culmination was a fight between DAMP members where there
were tears, insults, and punches. Although I recognised various DAMP
members and could rationalise the situation as an art happening (!), it was
still disconcerting to witness a violent incident and some DAMP members
performed so convincingly that the boundaries between fact and fiction were
once again tested. The performance had the feeling of a play fight that
could easily get out of control without anyone really meaning it to,
poignantly highlighting the fragility of human nature and the darker side
of a group dynamic. It was all video-taped, and through the duration of the
show the broken objects remained where they were and the video of the
opening night was screened in the gallery. Still images were also taken and
these were reproduced in The Age newspaper as well as in a catalogue
produce after the opening.

PH: We were talking about Zoe Walker's work earlier. How did you come across her?

CD: I'd seen her work "Portable Paradise" in Edinburgh a few years ago and
wanted to include it in a show I curated called "Diorama". But I couldn't
raise the money at short notice to bring her out. Then more recently I saw
in Artmonthly Australia that she was the Scottish Arts Council's
artist-in-residence at the Canberra School of Art. So I phoned her up for a
chat and it worked out that her partner Neil Bromwich went for a studio
residency at 200 Gertrude Street so they both spent a number of months in
Melbourne.

PH: Can you describe the work she made in Australia?

CD: This project followed on from "Portable Paradise’” which was a life-size
inflatable snow dome containing a tropical island scene which she could be
physically inhabited. While at the Canberra School of Art Zoe made an
inflatable Scottish mountain range which she transported to Lake Eyre.
Video footage and photographic documentation show her dragging the deflated
mountain across the arid land and eventually inflating it. In a related
series of photographs she adorns some animal ears and paws to jump around
like a kangaroo. In both instances she presents poetic but also pathetic
attempts to engage with the Australian landscape, to familiarise and
cultivate it, and identify with it. The works is as much about the baggage
we carry around with us that influences how we see and experience things,
as our desire for "other" places that are most powerful when imagined.

PH: To sum up?

CD: All the artists we have discussed use the fictitious to make manifest
feelings and desires which often shape our real life exchanges. It makes
sense that these artists use photography and video which are media that
negotiate the space between the everyday and our constructed reality.