Bodied

BODIED brings together performative video and printed matter by Gordon Bennett (AU), Cheryl Donegan (US), Alin Huma and Cheiko Kawaguchi (RO/JP), Jani Ruscica (FI), Wong Ping (HK) and Kawita Vatanajyankur (AU/TH).

A deliberate crossing of voices and physical gestures that moves from high-tech to decidedly lo-fi, the humorous to the unnerving, all set within the heritage Centenary Galleries.

A series of overlapping conversations between artists from diverse backgrounds and reflecting varied occasions and contexts of production, the exhibition provides a loose, unguided meditation on the roles of language, media, fashion, gender, sex and race in the shaping of the human form.

Themes include the myriad of ways through which language shapes our physical and social selves, domestic labour and class exploitation, racial divisions, and tactics of liberation.

BODIED presents videos by 90s video provocateurs Cheryl Donegan and Gordon Bennett alongside new, challenging works by young contemporary artists including Wong Ping’s Stop Peeping 2014, a surreal tale of a young man’s feelings of loneliness and erotic dislocation; the wilful absurdity of cultural specificity and signification within our present moment artfully captured in Jani Ruscica’s Human Flesh 2019; and Kawita Vatanajyankur’s positioning of herself as a domestic tool, simultaneously acting out and painfully embodying the loss of female selfhood within the labour mechanisms of the family unit.

Image credit - Jani Ruscica Human Flesh 2019. 2K video, stereo sound, 16 minutes. On loan from the artist. © Jani Ruscica, 2019.

Image credit - Kawita Vatanajyankur Poured 2013. Single chanel HD video, 4:43 minutes. On loan from the artist. © Kawita Vatanajyankur, 2013.