Speed and gravity. Bodies and machines. Parallels and performance. A hypnotic work by a groundbreaking Australian video artist.
Shaun Gladwell erupted onto the Australian art scene with the 2000 video work Storm Sequence , a self-portrait in which the artist is skateboarding in extreme slow-motion as a storm brews over Bondi Beach. He has since developed an international reputation for his evocative large-scale video works, photographs and sculptures and represented Australia at the Venice Biennale in 2009.
Gladwell uses filmic devices such as slow-motion and long pans to capture both tightly choreographed and improvised performances by breakdancers, skateboarders and BMX bike riders in a combination of rural and city settings in Australia, Japan, Brazil, France and Afghanistan. The resulting works, which he describes as "performative landscapes" are both rhythmic and poetic – distorting speed, gravity, space and time; exploring visual and spatial paradoxes.
ACMI commissioned Gladwell to develop an ambitious new body of work. The resulting exhibition, Shaun Gladwell: Stereo Sequences, featured a suite of new pieces that explored duality, parallels and mirroring – a series of "open experiments" that combined and expanded on the themes of Gladwell's career.
Shaun Gladwell: Stereo Sequences is the first in a series of major commissions by Australian and international artists at ACMI.
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Our commissions support the creation of new works by providing artists with the time and resources to nurture and develop ideas, to pursue cross-disciplinary collaborations and to work at a scale that would not otherwise be possible.
