Tammy Honey

BoomBoom

2011-07-05T10:05:00.014+10:00

Hello all,

Just letting you know about the group exhibition I am in called "BoomBoom"

ARS upstairs @ Napier Hotel

210 Napier Street

Fitzroy

Opening night Thursday 7July 6-9pm

Gallery hours

Wed - Thurs 3-8pm

Fri 1-8pm

Sat 1-5pm

Showing 7 - 28 July

New Work 2011

2011-06-14T19:00:00.004+10:00

Well I'm back with some new work in progress, its taken me four years but still working on iCandy. Here are some stills from the forthcoming series. More very soon!

Figuring Landscapes: Enactment

2010-04-23T14:04:00.003+10:00

Here are some more dates to see Figuring Landscape.

Australia
Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney 2 - 25 April, 2009;
Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane 10 - 12 July, 2009;
Melbourne Cinémathèque, 31 March and 7 April, 2010.

United Kingdom
Dundee Contemporary Arts 23 - 27 February, 2009;
FACT, Liverpool 23 - 25 Feb & 2 - 4 March, 2009;
Vivid, Birmingham 25 - 28 February, 2009;
Showroom, Sheffield 30 March - 2 April, 2009;
Glimmer, The 7th Hull International Short Film 21 - 26 April, 2009;
Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff 3, 10, 17, 24, 27 May, 2009;
Site Festival, Stroud Valley Artspace 2, 9, 16, 23 and 30 June, 2009;
Cinecity - Brighton Film Festival 22, 28 & 29 November, 2009.

Ireland
Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow 17, 24 and 26 September, 2009.

Other dates and venues will be announced in due course.

Melbourne Cinémathèque

2010-04-22T11:33:00.001+10:00

Figuring Landscapes: Enactment

Unclassified 18+
Various, 67 mins, Australia/UK, 1952-2008.

Figuring Landscapes: Enactment

Human habitation writes and performs the landscape as much as the landscape inscribes and enacts human presence.

These themes are explored by filmmakers and visual artists including Patricia Piccinini, Ben Rivers, Margaret Tait, George Barber and Tammy Honey.

Devised and curated by Catherine Elwes and Steven Ball, with Australian Curators Pat Hoffie and Danni Zuvela.

Dates		Wed 7 Apr 2010, 7pm
Location		ACMI Cinemas
Admission		Annual membership > Full $105 Concession $90 Mini membership (4 consecutive weeks) > Full $23 Concession $18

2009-02-04T13:25:00.002+11:00

Figuring Landscapes
Artists’ film and video on themes of landscape from Australia and the UK

Tate Modern, London
Friday 6 February – Sunday 8 February 2009

Figuring Landscapes is a remarkable collection of moving image works that has grown from the political and cultural history that links Australia and the UK. The 58 featured artists address questions of nation and identity as well as ecological survival, post-industrialism, gender, the touristic gaze, and uniquely in Australia the social, political and cultural status of Indigenous people in a post-colonial society.

Friday 6 February: Programme One, 19.00 followed by reception and catalogue launch
Saturday 7 February: Programme Two, 15.00; Programme Three, 17.00; Programme Four, 19.00
Sunday 8 February: Programme Five, 15.00 followed by panel discussion with artists from Australia and the UK chaired by Steven Bode, Film and Video Umbrella

£5 (£4 concessions), Season ticket £20 (£15 concessions). Booking recommended

Programme details & online bookings
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/film/figuringlandscapes.htm
or call 020 7887 8888.

Figuring Landscapes is accompanied by a major publication with commissioned essays by Professor Malcolm Andrews, Eu Jin Chua, Professor Catherine Elwes and Steven Ball, Dr. Stan Frankland, Dr. Eric Hirsch, Professor Pat Hoffie and Dr. Danni Zuvela and Professor Ross Gibson.

Participating artists:
Vernon Ah Kee (Australia), Steven Ball (UK), George Barber (UK), Anna Cady (UK), Peter Callas (Aust.), Nick Collins (UK), John Conomos (Aust.), Roz Cran (UK), Daniel Crooks (Aust.), Sergio Cruz (UK), Sofia Dahlgren (UK), Dalziel + Scullion (UK), Destiny Deacon (Aust.), Sarah Dobai (UK), Ann Donnelly (UK), Catherine Elwes (UK), Merilyn Fairskye (Aust.), Allan Giddy (Aust.), John Gillies (Aust.), Shaun Gladwell (Aust.), Dryden Goodwin (UK), Tony Hill (UK), Hollington & Kyprianou (UK), Tammy Honey (Aust.), Hobart Hughes (Aust.), John Hughes & Peter Kennedy (Aust.), Matt Hulse (UK), Esther Johnson (UK), Lyndal Jones (Aust.), Andrew Kötting (UK), Sandra Landolt (Aust.), Mike Latto(UK), Brendan Lee (Aust.), Eugenia Lim (Aust.), David Mackenzie (Aust.), Mike Marshall (UK), Jo Millett (UK), Scott Morrison (Aust.), Matthew Murdoch (UK), Susan Norrie & David Mackenzie (Aust.), David Perry (Aust.), Patricia Piccinini (Aust.), Bronwyn Platten (Aust.), William Raban (UK), Dominic Redfern (Aust.), Emily Richardson (UK), Ben Rivers (UK), Semiconductor (UK), Dan Shipsides (UK), Genevieve Staines (Aust.), Margaret Tait (UK), David Theobald (UK), Warwick Thornton & Darren Dale (Aust.), Jeff Doring (Aust.) and Hugh Watt (UK).

For further information on the works, artists and tour dates, see:
http://www.figuringlandscapes.co.uk
or email info@figuringlandscapes.co.uk

Figuring Landscapes was devised by Catherine Elwes & Steven Ball

Australian Curators: Professor Pat Hoffie & Dr. Danni Zuvela
UK Curators: Professor Catherine Elwes, Steven Ball
Programme advisors: Peter Bonnell & Mark Segal (ArtSway), Eu Jin Chua, Harry Darby, Dr. Stan Frankland, Dr. Eric Hirsch, Stuart Comer (Tate Modern).
Financial Support: Arts Council England, South East; Camberwell College of Art Research, International Centre for Fine Art Research (ICFAR) both at University of the Arts London; Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane; Tate Modern, London; ArtSway, New Forest; Australian High Commission, London; Australian Council for the Arts.

iJudith

2008-04-27T20:23:00.007+10:00

Tammy Honey, iJudith (2008), video still, HD as single channel, DVD, colour, sound, 3 min.

New work from the forthcoming series 'iGod' to be screened at various venues across Australia and Europe in 2008/09. More work coming soon... - that's me with the sword :) Many thanks to Paul, Phil, Shaun, Pearl and Krystal.

New Screening at the TATE Modern

2008-03-23T10:02:00.009+11:00

Tammy Honey, iBeach (2007), HDV as two channel installation, colour, sound, 4 mins.

Figuring Landscapes
Survey exhibition of UK and Australian video artists

Touring 2009-09

TATE Modern, London
Showroom, Sheffield
Chapter Arts, Cardiff
Cinemateque, Brighton
Bureau, Salford
Dundee Contemporary Arts
Vivid, Birmingham
Hull Film
FACT, Liverpool
Dell Gallery, Brisbane
Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

I am screening iBeach in the forthcoming major touring exhibition Figuring Landscapes throughout 2008-09 including galleries such as the TATE Modern and Gallery of Modern Art Brisbane. A full colour catalogue will be available soon.

New US Screening

2008-03-10T00:47:00.003+11:00

Perpetual Art Machine [PAM]
Mov-in Gallery, Sante Fe, USA
07.03.08-07.04.08

My work is a part of the touring New York video database installation Perpetual Art Machine [PAM] at Mov-in Gallery at the College of Sante Fe, USA. throughout March and early April.
Image courtesy of PAM website

New Screening in Berlin

2008-01-25T20:05:00.000+11:00

Tammy Honey, 9 Cinemas (2008), HDV as single channel projection, DVD, colour, sound, 5 mins

After Cinema
Directors Lounge 2008
Berlin, Germany
07.02.08-17.02.08

Brie Trenerry
Tammy Honey
Brendan Lee
Sam Keene
Shaun Wilson

Behind the scenes iCandy: Shoot 2

2007-10-02T09:25:00.000+10:00

Behind the scenes iCandy: Shoot 1

2007-09-23T16:02:00.001+10:00

2007-09-14T11:10:00.000+10:00

Filming soon: iCandy

2007-08-02T12:48:00.000+10:00

The iCandy series explores gender-reversal Action Video art through the guise of traditional working class, male-orientated iconography depicting female sexuality and further, childhood recollections of my father’s ‘girlie’ pin up calendars and centrefolds which decorated his panel beating workshop in Cairns during the 1970s and 1980s.

I plan to reconfigure these ‘pin-up’ girls in gender reversal activities, such as roadside, construction work, panel beating, pig shooting, go-kart racing whereby the underlying theme of reconstructing memory also plays with situational re-contextualisation of the image itself.

While the actors will dress in costumes to re-enact the memories I have of these kinds of images, the secondary affect by doing so raises the issue of female exploitation in the iconography of pin-up calendars brought through the gender stereotypes located in traditionally male-orientated working class mythologies.

New Screening at Perth International Film Festival 2007

2007-07-01T13:32:00.000+10:00

New Revelations
Perth International Film Festival 2007
curated by Leon Marvell
14.07.2007-28.07.2007
Spectrum Project Space
Perth, Australia
weblink

I am screening a selection of the iLandscape works at the Perth International Film Festival 2007 in a curated exhibition by Leon Marvell at the Spectrum Project Space in Perth. Some of the other artists include Kai Syng Tan, VJZoo, Alex Avtzoglou, and Shaun Wilson.

Sydney-based media archive D'Lux will also premiere their new arts program in the exhibition. For more info look up the festival website listed above.

New Screening in Melbourne

2007-04-17T21:08:00.000+10:00

Voyeur International Video Collective
April 16 - May 6, 2007: 69 Smith Street, Melbourne
June 25, 2007: Zurich, Switzerland
August 1, 2007: Helsinki, Finland
September, 2007: Amsterdam, Holland
Weblink: http://www.voyeurcollective.com/index.html

I am participating in the group exhibition/project by the Voyeur International Video Collective opening Tuesday 6:00pm-8:00pm April 17th at 69 Smith Street Gallery in Melbourne. A total of 28 artists are screening their works who are based in Australia and elsewhere. My work features the first public screening of the new iLandscape series filmed in January 2007.

The exhibition will tour to various venues throughout Europe later this year.

Image: copyright Voyeur Video Art Collective, 2007.

Latest artwork

2007-04-04T16:44:00.000+10:00

Sneak Look at iLandscape Series

2007-02-05T11:02:00.000+11:00

iBush 1.1, video still (2007), HDV as multi channel DVD, colour, sound, 3.22 mins.

iBush 1.2, video still (2007), HDV as multi channel DVD, colour, sound, 3.22 mins.

iIndustrial 1.1, video still (2007), HDV as multi channel DVD, colour, sound, 5.53 mins.

iIndustrial 1.2, video still (2007), HDV as multi channel DVD, colour, sound, 5.53 mins.

iBeach 1.1, video still (2007), HDV as multi channel DVD, colour, sound, 3 mins.

iBeach 1.2, video still (2007), HDV as multi channel DVD, colour, sound, 3 mins.

iLandscape Series

2007-01-10T11:09:00.000+11:00

iBush 1.1(2007) video still, HDV as two channel DVD, colour, sound, 5 mins.

iBush 1.2 (2007) video still, HDV as two channel DVD, colour, sound, 5 mins.

iIndustrial 1.1(2007) video still, HDV as two channel DVD, colour, sound, 5 mins.

iIndustrial 1.2 (2007) video still, HDV as two channel DVD, colour, sound, 5 mins.

iBeach 1.1 (2007) video still, HDV as two channel DVD, colour, sound, 5 mins.

iBeach 1.2 (2007) video still, HDV as two channel DVD, colour, sound, 5 mins.

Lushus Honey

2006-12-20T11:03:00.000+11:00

Tammy Honey, Lushus Honey: Red Series 1 (2004), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, Lushus Honey: Red Series 2 (2004), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, Lushus Honey: Red Series 3 (2004), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, Lushus Honey: Red Series 4 (2004), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, Lushus Honey: Red Series 5 (2004), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Manchurian Remix

2006-12-19T11:02:00.000+11:00

Tammy Honey, Manchurian Remix (2003) video still, DV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 3mins.

This video is the remixed version of 'Lushus Honey' dubbed in Mandrin instead of the original English version. The fictitious character, which is also my alter ego, is placed in context to the amateur music video clip genre and explores the relationships played out through an unachievable desire of pop fame.

The work was filmed and produced in Hobart in 2003 being the first of a major series of (current) work that teases out these themes. A total of 10 video installations will make up the significance of this series.

Manchurian Remix was screened at CAST, Hobart (second level) in December 2003. It will also feature in the forthcoming DVD ‘Tammy Honey: Video Hits 1’ available in late 2007.

14 Series

2006-12-16T11:02:00.000+11:00

Tammy Honey, 14 series #1 (2006), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, 14 series #2 (2006), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, 14 series #3 (2006), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, 14 series #4 (2006), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, 14 series #5 (2006), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, 14 series #6 (2006), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, 14 series #7 (2006), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, 14 series #8 (2006), lightbox, dimensions variable.

Tammy Honey, 14 series #9 (2006), lightbox, dimensions variable.

I Wanna be a Pop Star

2006-12-16T11:01:00.000+11:00

Tammy Honey, I Wanna be a Popstar (2003) video still, DV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 3mins.

This video is the second work in the Lushus Honey series and created as a deconstruction of the video projections used in the Kylie Minogue stage performance of GBI in the KylieFever2002 concert (staged in Manchester, 2002), I have explored the tensions of amateur pop desire for fame by subjecting the image itself to become generational – what we see is not a Kylie music video but rather a morphing of amateur pop desires acted out in the guise of a pop star through video art.

The work was filmed and produced in Hobart in 2003 and was screened at the Vital Signs conference at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in 2005. It will also be in the forthcoming exhibition Tammy Honey: Video Hits 2003-07 curated by Shaun Wilson.

iAmanda

2006-12-15T11:00:00.000+11:00

iamanda (2006) video still, DV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 5mins.

This work takes influence from the recent iPod commercials by filming a seemingly unaware headphone-claded pop-star-in-the-making in a private moment of dance and mime acted out in a public setting. While the character moves, jumps, falls to her knees, yells, and proclaims her secretly heard pop lyrics in a tone deaf rendition, the overall work takes on a performative response to my continuing investigation into pop desire yet at the same time responds to the culture of iPods and its subsequent affect on the disengaging of experience through public spaces.

This work will be screened in the forthcoming exhibition Tammy Honey: Video Hits 2003-07 curated by Shaun Wilson and feature in the DVD Tammy Honey: Video Hits 1 available in late 2007.

Back

Threesome

2006-12-15T10:58:00.001+11:00

Tammy Honey, Threesome (2006) video still, HDV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 5mins.

This video composites three versions of myself singing along to the Kylie Minogue song ‘Come Into my World’ and is visually based on the effects used in the music video clip of the same name which features several different versions of the singer performing in synchronisation.

In this, I wanted to take on these elements of parody yet place these in the context of the home where the isolated performer can be sheltered from the fears and anxieties of public ridicule.

The work will be screened as two versions in the exhibition Australian Gothic: Video Art, Now, curated by Shaun Wilson, at Project Space/Spare Room, Melbourne (version 1) and the Directors Lounge, Berlin (version 2) in Feb 2007. In the catalogue essay ‘Hearts of Darkness in the Australian Gothic’, Doug Church describes Threesome as:

Honey brings to life three versions of herself in the one frame singing along to a headphones track with a nail biting, tone-deaf performance. It is hard to decide whether ‘Threesome’ is a music video clip or a video clip about
music. Either way it provokes a deeper level of examination into the reasons why some obsess with the desire for
fame through pop music as evidenced in reality-television programs such as Australian Idol, and Pop Star. Honey brings to our attention through these pop desires that an uneasy tension is created by these noted dissatisfactions of the every day life by dreams and delusions of chart-climbing fame and fortune.

Further, Honey carefully involves the idea of ridicule. Perhaps one of the most entertaining parts of reality TV pop music programs is the inability for talent-challenged contestants to recognised they cannot sing when in fact they believe without question their ‘talent’ has promise. Indeed, with quotes such as American Idol’s Simon Cowell ‘If your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning’ it is hard not to see why
‘Threesom’e places this performance brutality on screen. The viewer cannot help but to assume the preconditioned
role of a judge in grading the performance we see projected in front of us. Yet this conceptual role forced onto the
viewer, perhaps without himself or herself knowing that they are no longer a spectator or an observer but rather,
now, a judge, demonstrates how a darker role of condemnation can be effectively used and, consequently,
integrated through video art. One might argue that from this, other video work that uses parody and ridicule can
also be closely liked to ‘Threesome’, in particularly Chris Cunningham’s ‘commentary on sex, cars and cellulite in
hip-hop clips for Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker.’ (Weir, 39)

References:
Kathryn Weir, ‘Jump Cut: Music Video Aesthetics’, in Video Hits: Art & Music Video, Queensland Art Gallery,
2004.

Threesome

2006-12-15T10:58:00.000+11:00

Threesome

2006-12-13T21:34:00.000+11:00

Threesome (2006) video still, single channel DV, colour, sound, 5 mins

iamanda

2006-12-13T21:29:00.000+11:00

iamanda (2006), video still, DV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 5 mins

I Wanna be a Pop Star

2006-12-13T17:12:00.000+11:00

I Wanna be a Pop Star (2003), video still, DV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 3 mins

Manchurian Remix

2006-12-13T17:09:00.000+11:00

Manchurian Remix (2003), video still, DV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 3 mins

Threesome (Berlin version)

2006-12-12T10:57:00.000+11:00

Tammy Honey, Threesome: Berlin version (2006), HDV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 4 mins, 10 seconds.

The sister version to Threesome will be specially created for the Berlin screenings of Australian Gothic: video art now featuring an altered film speed that slightly increases the motion and pitch of each character's singing.

I chose to make a second version to explore how such alterations can affect the viewer experience and articulation of the subject. Although the increase is only measured at 20% there is a dramatic shift in the work that yeilds an oddity about the dynnamics shared between each character.

The work will be made available as a special edition DVD featuring altered works from 2005-06.

Australian Gothic: Video Art Now

2006-10-12T11:16:00.000+10:00

Tammy Honey, Threesome (2006), HDV as single channel DVD, colour, sound, 5 mins

Project Space/Spare Room, Melbourne 05.02.07 - 23.02.07
Directors Lounge, Berlin 08.02.07 - 18.02.07

Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth 12.07.08 - 03.08.08

Curated by Shaun Wilson
Brie Trenerry
Brendan Lee
Tammy Honey
Marsha Berry
Larissa Hjorth
Alex Avtzoglou
Robert Hecimovic
Shaun Wilson

Hearts of Darkness in the Australian Gothic

In his essay ‘Australian Gothic’, Gerry Turcotte frames the idea that ‘long before the fact of Australia was ever confirmed by explorers and cartographers it had already been imagined as a grotesque space, a landed peopled by monsters. …it was for all intents and purposes, Gothic par excellence, the dungeon of the world. (Turcotte, 10) As he further establishes that a ‘Gothic mode’ existed in Australian literature from the comparative observations of a European settlement at odds with a strange and hostile environment, the continuation of this ‘mode’ is not unlike the current thread running through Australian video art as evidenced in the exhibition Australian Gothic.

Underpinning this mode is not entirely an easy matter. The historic term ‘gothic’ is, in itself, a direct translation meaning ‘bad German style’ coined by Renaissance scholars as an insult commonly used to describe medieval architecture and the decorative arts from the eleventh century onwards. And lets not forget the contemporary evolution of goth subculture from the late twentieth century loosely based on modern adaptations of Neoromanticism: these all play out a significant roll in contemporary art but to inform a gothic mode through video art requires a different understanding that has more to do with Goya than it does with Anne Rice or The Sisters of Mercy.

In Two Birds with One Stone, Brendan Lee gives us a taste for this role by dissecting aspects of Australian 'badlands' cinema where he reinvents a prison meeting room. 'Filmed in a menacing blue hue, two prison inmates by the name of Scumnuts and Pigkiller, speak in aggressive tones, their actions embellished by a vibrating projection screen which 'assaults' the viewer. Created in the Australian prison genre, Lee takes his inspiration from movies such as Stir, Ghost of the Civil Dead and Chopper. He considers the language of film, why we are no longer shocked by
violence and how easily we can be seduced by imagery.' (Bullock, 2006).

Originally exhibited at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2006, Two Birds with One Stone positions itself to what Roger Ebert asks: ‘is everybody in Australia a few degrees from true north? (Ebert, 2001) The unsettling nature of Lee’s video work draws close proximity to Australian national cinema yet the oddity found within the subject is that these recreations invite the viewer to articulate these themes through an uneasy and at times, abusive framework. The dark, noir-like scenes seduce the viewer with its Caravaggio-like thespian compositions until the violent dialogue between Scum nuts and Pig Killer takes hold of a darker level where the viewer is ultimately confronted and challenged with Lee’s attention to disturbance.

As with his earlier works that employ similar conceptual tactics, such as the video installation Role Model (2005), Two Birds with One Stone establishes visual strategies not unlike the seductive and stoic barbaric-ness of Goya’s Coloso (1810-12). Both works, which share similar lighting and tonal values, convey a quintessential gothic mode in that the implicit nature of violence looms within the suggestion of barbaric overtones – it is the alluring to what has just happened or what might occur that holds a central power over the viewer.

The same sort of dark imagery lurks in Alex Avtzoglou’s One Two Red Blue. The surreal and grotesque nature of Avtzoglou’s video work draws personal influence from experimental silent film such as Georges Melies Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902) and circus-themed cinema/theatre. This often psychologically disturbing ménage of noir-like images taps into a stream of picto-historic references stretching from Surrealist film to Stan Brakhage that follow the exploits of two female circus performers. Interlaced within this narrative is a performative sequence by which one such character seductively strokes and fondles a large dead Octopus to then massage the creature into her face and through her long draped hair.

This particular work is surprisingly sumptuous in colour and light that brings about the same kind of barbaric seduction that Lee generates in Two Birds with One Stone. The viewer cannot help but consider Avtzoglou’s clever positioning of aesthetics as a pleasing and somewhat comforting assurance that such delicate images provoke a disturbing undercurrent hiding beneath the artist’s bag of cephalopodan tricks. Just as author Hans Belting argues that video art ‘attracts the attention of the public with the help of a kind of mirror’ (Belting, 87), One Two Red Blue acts as a mirror of the grotesque to temporarily lull its audience into a false sense of visual harmony as the jump cuts steer away from the octopus sequence and back into the childlike actions of our two circus performers; hiding in boxes and twirling Hula Hoops. Yet we are left pondering to the fact are we watching a surreal dream or is this experience through the waking hours? The dreamlike mirror of the gothic mode certainly has as much to do in Avtzoglou’s work as it does with Robert Hughes’s own account of being hospitalised after his near-death car accident by which he laments that in his dreams ‘time [was] wholly lost in their maze’. (Hughes, 9) And this is exactly what One Two Red Blue subscribes, to become lost in a series of moments where time no longer exists; only the surreal notion of a strange and repulsive desire lurks beneath a gentrified image dislocated through the logic of uncertainty.

Tammy Honey’s Threesome constructs a different type of desire through a similar kind of ‘mirror’. Based on her long-term investigation into the merger between the quest for fame through pop music and the visual nature of MP3 advertising, Honey brings to life three versions of herself in the one frame singing along to a headphones track with a nail biting, tone-deaf performance. It is hard to decide whether Threesome is a music video clip or a video clip about music. Either way it provokes a deeper level of examination into the reasons why some obsess with the desire for fame through pop music as evidenced in reality-television programs such as Australian Idol, and Pop Star. Moreover, like the CD Karaoke: So You Wanna be a Pop Star Vol. 1-3 (2003), Honey brings to our attention through these pop desires that an uneasy tension is created by these noted dissatisfactions of the every day life by dreams and delusions of chart-climbing fame and fortune.

Further, Honey carefully involves the idea of ridicule. Perhaps one of the most entertaining parts of reality TV pop music programs is the inability for talent-challenged contestants to recognised they cannot sing when in fact they believe without question their ‘talent’ has promise. Indeed, with quotes such as American Idol’s Simon Cowell ‘If your lifeguard duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning’ it is hard not to see why Threesome places this performance brutality on screen. The viewer cannot help but to assume the preconditioned role of a judge in grading the performance we see projected in front of us. Yet this conceptual role forced onto the viewer, perhaps without himself or herself knowing that they are no longer a spectator or an observer but rather, now, a judge, demonstrates how a darker role of condemnation can be effectively used and, consequently, integrated through video art. One might argue that from this, other video work that uses parody and ridicule can also be closely liked to Threesome, in particularly Chris Cunningham’s ‘commentary on sex, cars and cellulite in hip-hop clips for Aphex Twin’s Windowlicker.’ (Weir, 39)

Brie Trenerry’s Sleep Paralysis (2006) also holds a dark embrace by subjecting the viewer to the artists collection of live flies especially bread (approximately 600 of them) for the work. We see a lifeless hand - perhaps dead, unconscious or maybe just asleep – posed in a delicate Renaissance-like stillness, originally exhibited in She Creeps at Spacement Gallery, Melbourne and Monash University’s Switchback Gallery, Churchill, in 2006.

Ashley Crawford describes this work as ‘deeply creepy, but its also infused with a kind of timeless elegance. Trenerry’s mastery of line is the key binding this gothic blue that combines images of nature run amok and hints of dark deeds’. (Crawford, 2006). And these dark deeds underpin the fascination of ‘what is about to happen next?’ Once the viewer gets past the notion of taboos – the ‘diseased’ fly crawling on the human skin without interruption – we might be forgiven in our quest to ask why this hand is not moving? Is she okay? Who did this? Is she dead?

Deeply emersed in an overtly romantic and tragic setting, Trenerry plays with her images by letting the central characters – those nasty flies –do all the work. Perhaps Sleep Paralysis has more to do with Honey’s Threesome in that the reaction each artists places onto the viewer can draw parallels, that of slow discomfort and mild irritation. Trenerry’s work is not only ‘deeply creepy’ but also deeply disturbing that further suggests a gothic mode in play – the seduction of aesthetics and the hidden oddities of horror.

Not surprising are the suggestions of cinema in Trenerry’s images that give rise to narrative structures closely linked to Film Noir. In a scene from Joseph Losely’s The Prowler (1951), Webb Garwood (Van Heflin), a policeman, bends down to the lifeless body of William Gilvray (Emerson Tracey) who lies motionless in frame. Arguably the most iconic scene of the film, Gilvray’s hand is extended outwards, perfectly still. Returning to Trenerry’s work, Gilvray’s pose closely interrelates with the fly travelled hand as the corpse or the sleeper holds darkened implications for the viewer in both scenes that Trenerry has carefully managed to compose.

Paying close attention to cinema of a different kind, Shaun Wilson’s Ubber Memoria series explores the imbeddedness of memory and its subsequent impact on places from vintage 8mm home movies. The series itself was filmed twice on separate visits to Southern Germany and London in October/November 2006 where the specific sites had been originally filmed by Wilson’s grandfather on 8mm film during the same months in 1956. This collection of noir-like images make up a total of 150 works belonging to a wider series (a selection of which are showing at Project Space exhibition) that Wilson himself describes as ‘video paintings’. The oddity of this series is what Briony Lee Davis describes as ‘a deep sense of foreboding’ (Lee Davis, 84) The various scenes in Ubber Memoria [IV] are slowed to 5% film speed which cause a random, clunky movement between frames that can be unsettling at times when offset by the conversion of 24 frames per second into 25 not to mention the griding and harmonious audio tracks blended together. Parts of the video are layered with old footage blended into the new as backgrounds contain a distant past filed with imperfects and lost memories.

The technique that Wilson calls ‘stacking’ is a painstakingly crafted with close attention to the imperfections of home movies and how they in turn, when grafted onto new film create what Leon Marven calls ‘deep time’. (Marven, 77) At first glance these works appear ‘pretty’ but as the duration of the video progresses one cannot help but feel discomforted by the schizophrenic film speed coupled with the intrusive stares of the characters looking straight at the viewer. We no longer become the un-noticed observer to find that we are, in fact, being observed. If Derrida was correct in describing the act of deconstruction as an indefinable decision which cannot be judged, Wilson plays with his audience by cementing two filmic examples of the past together that evidently watches the viewer through indefinability played out through a subtle and unforgiving gothic mode.

So from these mentioned works and others, finding the presence of this gothic mode in video art involves the seduction of imagery hinted with deeper and dangerous levels. While these examples are all but merely a small slice of a larger surface area, a common thread that unites these works are the attention to a darker side of image making masked through seduction. From Honey’s pop desires to Lee’s Scum nut’s and Pig Killer, the oddities of these kinds of works bring the ability to create mirrors of internal reflection that remix a darkened conceptual space into an uneasy and difficult territory.

- Doug Church December 2006.

References

Hans Belting, Art History after Modernism, Chicago University Press, 2003.

Ashley Crawford, ‘John Abbate & Brie Trenerry’, Spacement online archive, Spacement Gallery, Melbourne 2006, , last accessed 9 December 2006.

Natahsa Bullock, from the Brendan Lee artist website, , last accessed 10 December 2006.

Briony Lee Davis, ‘Boogy Jive and Bop’, Artlink, Vol.24, No.2, 2004.

Roger Ebert, ‘Chopper’, Robertebert.com [last accessed Dec 10, 2006].

Robert Hughes, Goya, Vintage, 2004.

Douglas Kellner, Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the Post Modern, Routledge, 2003.

Leon Marvell, ‘Brendan Lee, Shaun Wilson, Alexandra Gillies’, Photofile, Australian Centre of Photography, No. 76 Summer 2006.

Roger Scruton, Modern Culture, Continuum, London, 2005.

Gerry Turcotte, ‘Australian Gothic’, in Mulvey Roberts (ed) The Handbook to Gothic Literature, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1998, pp 10-19.

Kathryn Weir, ‘Jump Cut: Music Video Aesthetics’, in Video Hits: Art & Music Video, Queensland Art Gallery, 2004.

Artwork Sales

2006-04-17T21:25:00.000+10:00

Video Art: $3000.00 - $10,000.00 aud. (editioned 1-4)
Painting: $500.00 - $4000.00 aud
Photography: $750.00 - $1800.00 aud
Stencil: $850.00 - $3000.00 aud

iLandscape Series (selected 1/2 channel works)

2006-02-18T17:44:00.000+11:00

Tammy Honey, iLandscape 1.1 (2007), HDV as single channel video, colour, sound

Tammy Honey, iLandscape 1.2 (2007), HDV as single channel video, colour, sound

Tammy Honey, iLandscape 1: 2 channel version (2007), HDV as two channel video, colour, sound

Tammy Honey, iLandscape 2.1 (2007), HDV as single channel video, colour, sound

Tammy Honey, iLandscape 2.2 (2007), HDV as single channel video, colour, sound

Tammy Honey, iLandscape 2: 2 channel version (2007), HDV as two channel video, colour, sound

Tammy Honey, iLandscape 3: 2 channel version (2007), HDV as two channel video, colour, sound

Tammy Honey, iLandscape 4: 2 channel version (2007), HDV as two channel video, colour, sound

Tammy Honey, iLandscape 5: 2 channel version (2007), HDV as two channel video, colour, sound

I Wanna Be a Popstar Videos

2006-02-18T17:40:00.000+11:00

Tammy Honey, I Wanna be a PopStar [Lushus Honey] (2003), 1 minute extract, single channel video, colour, sound (8mb)

Manchurian Remix Videos

2006-02-18T17:33:00.000+11:00

Tammy Honey, Manchurian Remix (2003), single channel video, colour, sound.

Stencil Art 2004

2005-08-10T11:05:00.000+10:00

Tammy Honey, Love #1 (2004), acrylic paint, vinyl stencil, 300cm x 300cm

Tammy Honey, Love #2: white (2004), acrylic paint, vinyl stencil, 300cm x 300cm

Tammy Honey, Love #3: black (2004), acrylic paint, vinyl stencil, 300cm x 300cm