Wow
I wanna live there!
Need
a place to charge your batteries? Plug into Surge.
It's the living room created by filmmaker Barbara Sternberg and installation
artist Rae Davis at the Koffler Gallery in
Everyone
is immediately drawn to the liquid wall. The vision before us seems to be
breathing. Clearly the soul of this space, I claim it as my boudoir. The all-encompassing
image is at once both soothing and intriguing. This trickster of perfect
deception seems to coax the child out of everyone. It is turning perfectly
staid and cocktail-ready adults into playful explorers. I know of no one who
resists playing with the shadow they cast upon this luscious wave of water. It
surges and ripples before them. Maybe it is the magical contrast of their
negative space against the light wall that draws them. Hand
puppets, rabbit ears and
The
abutting wall curves gracefully. Along it, is an animated image of a line
scrawling, coiling, stretching, as it moves through
time. I vaguely think of the flicker of 19th century shadow boxes, Madame
Curie's photon photographs and Man Ray's rayographs.
The energy of the coils, jerking and tapping it's
Morse code of motion, seems in dialogue with the flowing swells of the deep
water beside it. White on black - black on white, the tension is easily holding
the space.
Looking
back across the gallery, bubbling with the laughter of having defied social
convention, my eyes meet the table of knives. Perfect! The kitchen is the heart
of every party. At first glance the table looks like a casual somewhat
precarious junk pile. The knives must have been dumped drunkenly to dry in the
aftermath of some enormous dinner party. But coming closer, I realize each
element has been meticulously glued, stuck in its form, frozen in place. The
beautifully sculpted polished and luminescent table knives are formed and
re-formed into architectural chaos. I wonder how this piece fits with the
images behind me, but as I look up I see the wall of shimmering lights and
shadows reflected by the maze of knives*. It seems that even the ordinary rutted
patterns of our lives, when illuminated. Can throw invisible
stochastic rays that cast a shadow on time. After feasting my eyes, I
feel it's time to move out to the living room, the entry to my dream home.
Here
the clean lines of modernism meet the complexity of humanism. In the portal of
the gallery space float two life-sized, vertical projection screens suspended
by tension wires. The piece is a balanced mix of minimalist lines, defined
angles and moving clips of reality. The clean lines and architectural detailing
form a sculptural centrepiece. The two screens are
transformed with each new image fleeting across the surface. The muted changing
colours fill the screen canvas like an abstract
painting.
A
16mm film loop projects on to both faces of each screen, so the alchemy of the
projection can be viewed from almost any angle without interruption. Like the
surging wave, the two screens are timed to ebb and wane in changing density and
rhythms of colour. One screen is structured around
the colours of the spectrum; the other is a collage
of close-cropped segments of a woman's domestic life. The visions of an egg
cracking on a bowl, or water splashing across a child's face suddenly appear
and linger just long enough to become recognizable.
Although
I am a voyeur to these intimate moments, I feel the welcome and warmth of the
hearth. The reflections of old home movies are the fragments of common human
experience - I do not tire of the repetitive loops of fleeting memory and life
perspective. In fact, I feel at home there.
(originally posted with photos by Michael Alsted
on web at www.year01.com/issue7/surge.html
October, 2000)