How does art history and practice translate across geography and time?
This is not film-making: Artists work for cinema presents five new works by New Zealand artists Gavin Hipkins, Juliet Carpenter and Gregory Kan, Daniel Malone, Louise Menzies and Nathan Gray (AU). Commissioned by CIRCUIT and curated by George Clark (UK), the project invites each artist to make a single channel work up to ten minutes in length in response to the writings of the late New Zealand conceptual artist Julian Dashper (1960-2009).
Centrally focused on the history, theories and popular ideas of abstraction, conceptualism and minimalism as working methodologies, Julian Dashper's work sought to understand the cultural and geographical position of New Zealand globally. His practice considered how this country received and disseminated visual information, and manifested itself in various forms including paintings, photographs, found objects (which he infuses with abstract images), various multiples, limited edition CD and 12” records and a series of conceptually driven videos.
The five artists in This is not film-making. Artists work for cinema were each invited to consider the work and writing of Dashper as a model, inspiration or starting point; but to create original works reflecting their own distinct practice.
Curator George Clark (UK) says “While I’m interested in how the cinema can be understood as a place for engagement and circulation of art and ideas, Dashper's position outside of the dominant discussions of film and video, and his interest in history, distance and negation are also factors that have drawn me to consider his writings as a productive basis for this project. True to Dashper's work I have invited the artists to make responses that may take the form of negation or reframing of the terms of this invitation.”
Dashper’s writings were posthumously collected in This Is not Writing (Auckland: Clouds and Michael Lett, 2010).
