Image: Warwick Thornton, Payback, 1996. Film transferred to video, monochrome, 10m20s. Griffith University Art Collection. Purchased with assistance from the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, 1996. Image courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.
Cognitive Dissidents: Reasons to be Cheerful
20 February – 9 April 2020
Comprising over 20 works that cover both documentary and synthetic forms, Cognitive Dissidents: Reasons to be Cheerful explores the development of Australian video art from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Video’s capacity for self-reflexivity established it early on as a fluid and expansive medium. Firstly, as a documentary form, video has both reflected and informed political movements and social experimentation. Secondly, new image-making possibilities using video feedback – in which the image generates itself – have been central concerns.
Cognitive Dissidents explores artists’ recognition of the widely applicable experimental aspects of video, where it is seen as a live medium, and where immediate and cultural/political feedback was central to the artists’ thinking or their immediate needs. The artists shown here reflect on their engagement with the medium and with their worlds.
While many works included were made in the earliest days of video, the notion of the experiment was not superseded by later work, but has continued throughout. Likewise, while most of the works are not entirely electronically produced, video is not simply a photographic medium either; it relates to the feature film as electronic music does to orchestral music.
Cognitive Dissidents inquires into the meaning and politics of dissidence through its exploration of the value of the experiment, and the possibilities of aesthetic and social politics. The title of the show is a playful take on the 1979 song and single "Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3" by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, which simply lists a number of reasons to be cheerful, reflecting the energy and optimism for change embodied by this selection of works.
Cognitive Dissidents: Reasons to be Cheerful has been curated by respected Sydney curator, artist and conservator Stephen Jones, who has worked with video since the early 1970s.
Artists: ARF ARF, Debra Beattie, Ariel, Joan Brassil, Warren Burt, Peter Callas, Barbara Campbell, John Conomos, Francesca da Rimini, Malcolm Ellis, Merilyn Fairskye, Lyndal Jones, Michelle Mahrer, Frank Osvath, Simon Penny, David Perry, Jill Scott, Geoff Weary, Robyn Webster and Judith Wright
installation images
- Debra Beattie Expo Schmexpo, 1986. 16mm film transferred to video, colour, sound, 5m30s. Griffith University Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2017.
- Image courtesy of the artist.