Location
Pelazzo Contarini, Venice and Grau Projekt, MelbourneStart date
2020-01-08End date
2019-10-26Language
engNotes
Note two iterations of project explained in notes from Broadsheet article:
An immense group exhibition built on artists’ responses to fake news.
Word of Mouth originated as a pop-up exhibition at the 2019 Venice Biennale, delving into fact and fiction via propaganda, subversive street art, extra terrestrials, fake news and surveillance.
Now it’s Melbourne’s turn. From September 12 to October 26 it’s on at Grau Projekt, a 1000-square-metre warehouse gallery in Clifton Hill by Matt Bax. He’s the maverick behind Bar Americano and the world-class but now-closed Der Raum, Bar Economico and Bar Exuberante.
The curator is Dr Peter Hill, a Glasgow-born Australian artist and writer, who has been on a round-the-world lecture tour speaking about fake news since 2017. For this exhibition he’s recruited 25 artists from Australia, Singapore and Scotland.Research statement
This was a video and installation work made for a curated exhibition in Venice at Pelazzo Contarini and Grau Projekt Melbourne. Held during the Venice Biennale the work further explores my interest in appropriation, remediation and detournement. It splices footage from the final scene in Death in Venice with the final moments in Romper Stomper. Two vastly different films that share in their denouement a beach scene, a death and fascists.The notes for the work in the exhibition read thus: 'Metastinction Event' brings together a few different kinds of deaths. Subjectivity is fluid out on the beach, and death be unkind. The artist becomes neo-nazi, who becomes a figure of dumb obfuscation and explanation - a perfect circle for our times. The work responds to key contemporary figures and messages by dubbing political rhetoric and readings from Kafka's Metamorphosis to explore and question the fundamental shifts taking place currently in our relations with our environment and others. Its significance lies in the profile of the event having been promoted in Frieze Magazine and Art Monthly and elsewhere, while interviews with the curator, Peter Hill, were featured on the Arts Show, on Radio National and in Broadsheet and other publications. It's context was a curated exhibition in four "fragments" choreographed by Dr Peter Hill, a Glasgow-born Australian artist, writer, and independent curator. First presented during The Venice Biennale in May 2019 and then in Melbourne in its expanded version, Word of Mouth showcased 25 leading artists from Australia, Singapore and Scotland. All Word of Mouth artists, whose ages range from early twenties to late sixties, exhibit nationally and internationally. Many have won prestigious art prizes, and most have work in important museum and private art collections. They are very much at the contemporary cutting edge, and they all embody the title that Ralph Rugoff eventually chose for his Biennale “May You Live in Interesting Times"Publication classification
JO1 Original Creative Works – Visual Art WorkScale
NTRO MinorExtent
1 MP4 file, 4 jpegs and PDFEditor/Contributor(s)
Hill PEvent
Word of Mouth. Exhibition (2019 : Melbourne, Victoria)Publisher
Peter Hill - Curator and adjunct professor at RMITPlace of publication
Pelazzo Contarini, Venice and Grau Projekt, Melbourne
