richard giblett, geoff newton, ronnie van hout and kimmo vennonen
I first saw Analogue Technologies while answering (paying for) trivia questions at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space annual quiz night. The juxtaposition of this four-way exhibition exploring music, materiality and memory meshed well (strangely} with the quiz night's theme of 'Fame'. That brain dazzling night began with a rendition of lrene Cara's hit single of the 1980s from the Dynamic Dancers, resplendent in leg warmers, headbands and Lycra. Hard to believe it has been twenty years.
Music has a way of taking us back to a very specific time, putting us in our place. It reveals particular influences, our age. lt maps histories. Is revelatory.
Analogue Technologies is an exhibition that makes us remember. The four artists, Ronnie van Hout, Richard Giblett, Kimmo Vennonen and Geoff Newton, traverse nostalgia, memory, past technologies, aural and material histories as a way to articulate and document our culture. Working with musical puns and metaphors and actual materials, the artists draw us into a dialogue about our own reference points and experience, a discourse about what makes up our contemporary culture , who we are.
Rock by Ronnie van Hout is the first thing you see in this open and resonating exhibition space. lt consists of three fake rocks (one large and two small for the speakers) which are most probably granite and covered in fake moss, a tiny video screen you have to be tall enough to peer at and one music sample which is played over and over. Said to be 'a visual and aural pun of van Hout's I just wanna rock attitude', Rock teases us with references to rock 'n' roll, the Flinstones, dinosaurs, even the Old Testament. Rock is