Seventh Artist Cinema.

‍Join us in April and May for our first two sessions of Seventh’s Artist Cinema. Using our outdoor cinema infrastructure, we are presenting curated pairings of artist cinema, video work, short films, or works in progress.

Session 2: Saturday May 16th - Veronica Charmont + Ena Grozdanic.

Veronica Charmont will present a new work titled 'The Calcified Ear'. 'The Calcified Ear' investigates the chemical architecture of our inner ear and the disorder Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. This common disorder evokes brief episodes of severe spinning and revolves around the displacement of microscopic crystals known as Otoconia. The film examines the chemical connections these crystals have to the formation of limestone rocks, and their continual relationship across organisms, land and sea. Shot on 16 mm, a crystalline medium, The Calcified Ear synthesises chemistry and geology whilst contemplating how our bodies are inseparable to the compounds of the universe.

Ena Grozdanic will present a work titled 'Sabotage in Seven Acts'. ‘Sabotage in Seven Acts,’ is an exploration of a rumour of direct action to defend a river system. It takes this rumour, unverifiable, constantly mutating, and wonders what worlds it could birth—whether truth or fiction or somewhere in-between, the rumour forces us to ask: should we not all engage in minor acts of resistance? Does the disappearance of rivers not call for filibuster, for a sustained insurgency?

‘Sabotage in Seven Acts’ focuses on people on the frontlines, away from centres of policy and commerce. It imagines the very first collaborative act of sabotage: how did it feel to join an  autonomous and stealthy riot? What tactics were used to bog down construction? What was the smell of the air that night? The film contemplates the role of art during climate catastrophe, concluding that for disobedience to occur, the conditions for courage must be present - and if they’re not, they must be created. It commits itself to generating such conditions, to making the tools and actions of resistance seductive. 

"Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superhuman, a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, an over-going and a down-going." — Friedrich Nietzsche

The Overwoman is a new experimental live film by Ari Angkasa presented with Seventh Gallery and commissioned by Multicultural Arts Victoria as part of their Diasporas commissioning series. Through live and archival forms, Angkasa extends the trope of the femme fatale figure in cinema to make sense of trans-diasporic identity in a society edging dangerously towards fascism. Borrowing from the ritual and theatre of organised religion, The Overwoman subverts the famous right wing incel-adopted Nietzschean concept of the Übermensch (Overman)—an ‘ultra-human’ birthed from the pitfalls of postmodernity—as a critique of Western exceptionalism and its sociological effect on queerness.

Anchored in an acute awareness of the body as a cinematic medium, The Overwoman sees Angkasa across live and archival forms performing rituals of nostalgia for the femme fatale. Contextualising Nietzsche’s Übermensch in different realities both on stage and on screen, Angkasa reconciles her transitional dysphoria with the narcissistic guilt of Western exceptionalism. Asking, where does altruistic social responsibility end and indulgent self-preserving individualism begin? Where do they blur together?

The Overwoman is presented by Seventh Gallery and commissioned by Multicultural Arts Victoria through their Diasporas commissioning series. The Overwoman is generously supported by Creative Australia and the City of Melbourne.

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Join us in April and May for our first two sessions of Seventh’s Artist Cinema. Using our outdoor cinema infrastructure, we are presenting curated pairings of artist cinema, video work, short films, or works in progress.
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‍Look How Far We've Come: Teaching Pan-Cinema Videomaking.

“You know when you’re so used to being the camera man?”

“Everything is in conversation; we should mute the authors”

Keiso will be screening their 2020 audio/video work Social Listening: VIRUS VIRUS USA that was filmed and recorded in New York City, the audio/video montage maps a process of documentative production in a time of both constant and muted accumulation.

Garden Reflexxx will share an excerpt of their 2020 video series Bins, created specifically for Seventh Gallery (online) across 30 days, which brought to screen the duo’s neglected rushes as a sprawling body of work. A cut severs but also creates; Bins works to liberate shamed offcuts of their staunch structures. This could be an ongoing practice of artist filmmaking which raises questions around how film ‘making’ falls under evasive power structures, ideas that tell you right or wrong, instead of true and fake. Do films have pretty privilege? Is it possible to correct this?‍

Carmen and Garden Reflexxx will then discuss their working methods alongside a rushes party that sees them open up their hard drives to expand on their mutual understandings of working with efficacy, commemoration, the sublime, and the ‘ode film’.

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Join Julie Ha and Panda Wong in ‘dreaming with dogs’, a two-part workshop series that focuses on dogs as subjects, collaborators and companions. Guided by a pup’s perspective, how can we imagine the world in new ways?

To quote Donna Haraway in The Companion Species Manifesto, ‘...dogs are not surrogates for theory; they are not here just to think with. They are here to live with…’ The first workshop will be a dog-focused reading group, where we will discuss dogs’ potential as artistic collaborators and their significance as our closest companion species. The second workshop will be a doggy life drawing session led by local artist Lorilee Yang.

You are welcome to BYO dog, but please ensure that they are vaccinated, well-behaved and on a leash at all times for the safety of all pups and people.

Readings will be sent out beforehand in a document, printed versions will also be available at the workshop.

All materials will be provided. Places will be capped at 15 per workshop.

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In Celtic folklore, the Selkie, a shapeshifting creature, traverses between seal and female form. The Selkie’s fate takes a turn when her seal skin is stolen by a man, driven by greed and desire, condemning her to life on land. Trapped in human form and thrust into motherhood, she yearns for meaning amidst disconnection. After many years, she finds her stolen skin, a symbol of her liberation, prompting her decision to abandon her human life and reclaim her authentic self underneath the waves.

The Reclamation features seven intaglio etchings inspired by the Selkie’s plight, that echo the estrangement from both body and land that permeates modern life. Each etching is a meditation on the nature of being in a body, the figures depicted shift between states of subjugation and empowerment, restraint and freedom, domesticity and emancipation. The works unveil a sense of the body’s inherent vulnerability while celebrating its enduring resilience amidst the tides of existence.

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Sarah Drinan appears courtesy of FUTURES.

The Sunny State for Shady Characters

Anna McDermott with Paul Hogarty

[TW: death, addiction]

The Sunny State for Shady Characters complicates notions of dirtiness and cleanliness, consumption and abstinence, through a quasi-memorial to Paul Hogarty (1960 - 2019). Paul was Anna’s uncle—an artist, musician, and addict—who died alone in his St Kilda apartment in April 2019 with drugs found in his system. Anna quit drinking eighteen months later.

Grounded in her personal experience of recovery, The Sunny State for Shady Characters recontextualises Paul’s archives to contemplate and subvert tropes associated with the failed-artist, successful-addict paradigm, and vice versa.

The dual meaning of the word ‘grit’ or ‘gritty’ is important: 1) dirt; abrasive in character; 2) courage, determination; an exerted effort. Whilst possessing the latter definition may be applauded, the former directs one towards a societal fringe or edge(iness).

Failure, shame, desire and will are examined through an unburying of inked soliloquies, foreplay with a dirty martini, and an encore from 80s punk band, Roaring Mungrel.

Introduction, 'Circling the plane', Eleanor Amor and Lorna Quinn.

Eleanor's sculptures and Lorna's paintings each investigate speculative imaginations and dreams. Key concepts drawn upon in these works consider human fantasies, subconscious fears, concerns and illusions. Though their works are disparate they share a connectedness in their thematic underpinnings and visual language. Each references German Expressionism through their notable colour palettes and use of light and shadow.

‍Eleanor’s delicate and spindly metal sculptures, while particularly elegant and exact in their execution, evoke a sense of unease and precarity. The influence of German Expressionist film set design is evident to those who are familiar with it; exaggerated lines and shadows, severe angles, set against warped and elongated structures, give the affective impact of terror and disorder. Eleanor makes tangible manifestations of existential dread and creates an environment where the notion of, or familiarities associated with, home offers no sanctuary.

Lorna’s artistic influences span broad art historical periods from medieval panel painting to Renaissance painters as well as Romantic artists. Her works are precise and controlled and reflect her desire to make clear order of what she notes to be the “ambiguities of the present”. The canvases attempt to become sanctuaries of shelter for those seeking solace in the absence of societal cohesion. Though in enacting this Lorna suggests that the work has the opposite effect and instead they become a reminder of the shallowness of our ideals. That they have an alienating impact. By rendering literal contexts as vessels of containment, Lorna confronts the inherent contradictions between fantasy and reality.

‍Despite not sharing the same medium, both practitioners present meticulous works, they are complementary and considered when set together and encourage a broader dialogue that reflects upon landscapes, possible environments, architecture, home and shelter. Converged here, each artist has outwardly portrayed their internal desires, unsettling anxieties and their insecure or tenuous relationship with their current realities.
- Isabella Hone-Saunders

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Eleanor Amor's artist statement: For this exhibition, I've constructed a series of sculptures that capture the unsettling nature of anxiety dreams. Drawing inspiration from German Expressionist set design, the architectural landscapes depicted in Giorgio De Chirico’s metaphysical paintings, and common dream motifs, I aim to present sculptural works that touch on themes of feeling lost, trapped, or watched.

Anxiety dreams often induce a profound sense of entrapment, where individuals grapple with feelings of being lost, pursued, or surveyed. These dreams manifest as distorted spaces, labyrinthine environments, reminiscent but altered locations and elusive destinations. For this exhibition, I intend to recreate this sensation through sculptures that feature uncanny paneless windows, staircases with no destination, and the intricate pathways of a labyrinth within a hallway.

Each artwork is designed to evoke a sense of foreboding and claustrophobia. By creating works that reference home, each piece provides an eerie sense of familiarity without a sense of safety.

‍Lorna Quinn's artist statement: In this body of work, I’m interested in the illusory nature of desire and the fantasies that house it. Responding to the ambiguities of the present, I crave a more legible order. I imagine a dwelling place, a vessel, in which everything is visible and truth is absolute. By making pictures of literal contexts, containers I can orient myself in, I aim to exteriorize and then subsume a fantasy of wholeness. 

The fantasies we use to propel forward our lives are undermined in their contact with it. These visions remain intact within the imagination, but when touched by the real are exposed for their vacuity. My paintings are intended as vessels of shelter, but, embodied, instead form an enclosure around the void, as desire vacates and takes up residence in the next object.

Eleanor Amor and Lorna Quinn have been curated into a two-person exhibition in Seventh's Gallery 3 by Isabella Hone-Saunders.