Zones Of Contact: 2006 Biennale Of Sydney
Contemporary Art Centre Of South Australia
Until Sun 22 Oct

'Zones Of Contact' is, for the most part, a survey of culture - of hybridity, segregation, the private life, and the architecture of a community. The exhibiting artists, it must be noted, are themselves exposed to the changing diasporas of cultural zoning, having each lived within several countries and communities for the sake of their art and livelihood.

Olga Chernysheva explores a plethora of concepts pertaining to the activities within the public and private eye, and the purpose of the artist in documenting these daily occurrences. Seven Exercises (2004), for example, reflects on the everyday happenings of quiet city life. A man sweeps the sidewalk, a bow-legged man hobbles down the street, and a child rides a scooter. Each of these actions is presented as a numbered exercise, extracted from its original context and depicted as a stand-alone event. The slow-speed film skips frames and blurs much of the action. In doing so, the viewer is forced to imagine the frames that have been missed in order to create a coherent sequence. This, in many ways, reflects the theme of the exhibition as a whole.

In Chen Chieh-Jen's 30 minute silent film, Bade Area (2005), the aesthetics of suburbia - old signs, dirtying buildings, the appeal of the road - are used to describe a series of events in a way that is so mundane it becomes almost romantic. It becomes quite apparent, however, that the communities depicted in the film have themselves been affected by globalized zoning - every location the artist portrays is in a state of dislocation and decay. In many ways Bade Area becomes an investigation in mapping: the mapping not only of a series of locations, but also of a series of events, cultures, and individuals.

In the Atlas Group's We Can Make Rain But No One Came To Ask (2005) this 'mapping' becomes even more literal. During the 17 minute film scenes of cityscapes are interconnected with x-ray-like blueprints of buildings, at once depicting the imagined with the fact, and the design with the execution. With footage collected from state archives and the press, the work creates a series of cities that are both real and unreal. People appear and disappear as they traverse the streets, suburbs give way to flashes of abstract colour, and buildings become isolated from their surrounding environment. In this way, the scenes and events depicted become cultural memories rather than evident facts. It is this interplay between the real and the unreal - what is remembered and what is forgotten - that really creates a tension within the works of each of the artists.

In Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir's video Beyond Guilt - The Trilogy (2005), the tension between what is portrayed and what is only hinted at becomes overwhelming. Exploring the darker side of experience - a culture of sex, drugs, and violence - the work allows the viewer to see only select parts of the act. In these instances, it is the things we don't see that are most terrifying. The breaks between scenes allude to violence, rape, and the ever-present acts against women that continue to be suppressed and silenced within society. At times, however, we are shown glimpses of a youthful innocence, of the strength of these female characters to still be joyful and optimistic. But these feelings, like all of the works in the exhibition, become nothing more than memory.

As a whole 'Zones Of Contact' brings together interconnecting stories of communities and cultures in a way that depicts the document alongside, or within, the memory. The blurring and fracturing of boundaries, and the tension between the seen and the unseen act, challenge the notion of history, society, and humanity. The decay of the fact into the memory brings with it a foreboding sense of the silenced and the unreal in ways that question what it means to observe or to be a part of a documented modern life.

Lauren Sutter



Prue Gramp: Untitled 2, Ink, plaster on canvas



Atlas Group: We Can Make Rain But No One Came To Ask (2005)