Closeup of hand - a still from Ross Gibson - head_phone_film_poems
Commissions

Ross Gibson: head_phone_film_poems

10 Jun 2020 – 5 Nov 2021, Gallery 5

Ross Gibson’s online exhibition features a suite of films that creatively remix an array of ‘readymade’ online archives.

head_phone_film_poems is a collection of thirteen films that creatively remix material from online archives including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) film material in the National Archives of Australia, crime scene photographs from the Justice and Police Museum Sydney, and Gibson’s own social-media-stored collection of strange late-night phenomena filmed in his neighbourhood over the past decade. Drawing on these caches of ‘readymade’ footage, the head_phone_film_poems are shaped by three guiding principles: they must be produced entirely on the iPhone, they must feature some visualised language and they must suggest an enormous amount more than they show.

View the exhibition

Still from Single File by Ross Gibson - 'yearning'

ASIO_Dream-mixes

Cropped still from Spirit_Patrol - dolls in a tiny armchair

Minimalist-cinema_Crime_Scenes

Still from Airborne_Thessalonians - planes and smoke spirals

Found_footage_Dream-mixes

Still from Darkwater Thessalonians by Ross Gibson - sprinklers

Neighbourhood_Epiphany-mixes

About Ross Gibson

Ross Gibson is Centenary Professor of Creative & Cultural Research at the University of Canberra. He works collaboratively on books, films, artworks and strategic-planning exercises, and he supervises postgraduate students in similar pursuits.

During the early 2000s he was Creative Director for the establishment of ACMI (known then as the Australian Centre for the Moving Image) at Federation Square in Melbourne. Prior to that, while working at the University of Technology in Sydney, he was a Senior Consultant Producer during the development and inaugural years of the Museum of Sydney. Over the past two decades he has also held Professorial posts at UTS and the University of Sydney.

Professor Ross Gibson
head_phone_film_poems - an interview with Ross Gibson

An interview with Ross Gibson

Ross Gibson reveals the allure of uncatalogued archives, thinking in haiku and his definition of the poetic, and the creative benefits of presenting works online.

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Maria Tumarkin and Ross Gibson

Making head_phone_film_poems

Learn more about Ross Gibson's approach to using archives as 'readymade' source material for his work, in this talk with Maria Tumarkin hosted at ACMI as part of the Art + Film series.

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cropped - Still from Fond_Inland_Born - girl smiling - Ross Gibson - head_phone_film_poems.png

Review: head_phone_film_poems

"Gibson’s unique aesthetic is derived from his ability to produce intensely poetic reveries from the unlikeliest of materials." – The Review Board

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