Very Moving Images

Last Wednesday witnessed the official opening of the latest exhibition in the subterranean screen gallery at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Centre Pompidou Video Art 1965 – 2005.

Drawn from the Musée national d'art moderne Collection of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the exhibition traces the evolution of the video image in contemporary art, and presents the aesthetic realisations of artists who have utilised video as a creative medium. From early, small-scale works to more recent and ambitious pieces, it’s a remarkably intimate exhibition, featuring numerous small monitors, equipped with multiple sets of headphones, that facilitate an individual appreciation of the various works rather than being dominated by larger, more cinematic displays.

That said, more elaborate full and split screen works are also on display, including UK artist and film-maker Isaac Julien’s Baltimore (a homage to 1970s blacksploitation films such as Shaft and Cleopatra Jones, but also a subtle, surreal commentary on issues of race, class and history) and French artist Pierre Huyghe’s exploration of the twilight zone between fact and fiction, The Third Memory; a carefully observed fusion of Sidney Lumet’s 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon and the real-life events it was based upon.

Among the exhibition’s highlights are the studied meaninglessness of Samuel Beckett’s precisely ordered Quad I & II; Bruce Nauman’s Going Around the Corner Piece, a playful satire of the familiar ‘white cube’ exhibition space that simultaneously welcomes and excludes the viewer, and also a subtle commentary on surveillance culture; and Tony Oursler’s Switch, which inhabits unexpected corners imbuing the exhibition with a vivid sense of individual personality.

Centre Pompidou Video Art 1965 – 2005, a free exhibition, is open daily, 10am – 6pm until Sunday May 27.