GARY DEIRMENDJIAN / MICROVIDS

Gary Deirmendjian is currently exhibiting MICROVIDS at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery. MICROVIDS is an entire single channel video exhibition kit in a box, for viewing on smart devices with internet access, such as mobile phones or tablets.

dLux MediaArts have produced a unique touring exhibition consisting of a catalogue and a set of clear acrylic slides, each inscribed with the details and QR code of one of Gary’s 64 MICROVIDS that exist on YouTube.

It is a flexible exhibition, where galleries are able to curate their own vision and where viewers are free to engage with the works in their own time with their own smart device, or those supplied by the exhibition.

MICROVIDS makes gallery walls permeable and creates opportunities for dialogue about what constitutes an exhibition and artworks. This exhibition can be the source of an ongoing and varied program with no time limitations.

Hervey Bay Regional Gallery have in a novel way created a relaxed lounge environment to host the exhibition, where the kit and smart tablets with internet access are centrally placed on a coffee table. Visitors may select a slide take a tablet or use their own device to scan the QR code and watch the respective MICROVID.

"as an artist it is for me essential to find means to connect directly with a broader public one-to-one free of any obligation mediation or justification. this preferably in more public and openly shared space. i have come to appreciate youtube as one such place." - Gary Deirmendjian

Gary Deirmendjian’s MICROVIDS are fragmented snapshots of the contemporary urban environment and our existence within it. Captured typically on a mobile phone (by the hundreds) and over time a few being edited towards resolved works, these short videos utilise lo‐fi technology to document small moments in daily life. Completely reliant on serendipity and the caprices of the city, the works are unplanned and spontaneous urban portraits that capture the exquisite pain and beauty underpinning the human condition.

MICROVIDS will be on display at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery until 8 September, 2013. 

LIAM BENSON AT THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIMENTAL ART FOUNDATION...

Liam Benson_True Blue (video still)_2005

Liam Benson is currently included in Tough Love, a group show curated by Christine Morrow at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation (AEAF).

Tough Love is an exhibition that explores dysfunction. The work of six Australian artists variously embody imagery of suffocating relationships, problematic behaviours, vulnerability, anxiety or suffering. Artists include Liam Benson, Romi Graham, amira.h., Kate James, Tiffany Parbs and Fiona Roberts.

"Liam Benson reinvents himself as a new character in every work of art. Sometimes he even reinvents himself within a single work. In the video True Blue, in which he sings the John Williamson song of the same name, he starts off as a character that is equally an average guy in a hoodie and a biblical Jesus. Gradually, he transforms into a transgender patriotic mascot for Australia. In True Blue, and his other video Sirens in which he sings the Fleetwood Mac song Dreams, Benson is not being ironic, or witty or camp. He looks directly at the camera, channels enormous power and honesty, and sings out searing emotional pain. So fluid, it seems, is his subjectivity and selfhood that he even multiplies his own image and voice, in the work Sirens, to provide his own back-up singers. Sirens, of course, are sexually alluring creatures and lead men to their death. A song sung by a siren is the inverse of torch song; the implication is that it is the musical equivalent of a snuff movie." (excerpt from catalogue by Christine Morrow)

The exhibition runs from 8 June - 7 July 2012.