Anne Landa Award for Video and New Media Arts 2009
It seems ironic that the curatorial focus of the 2009 Anne Landa Award exhibition Double Take is on mutability, given the biennial series’ own shifting disposition. The first two instalments exclusively celebrated the work of Australian moving image and new media artists. In this third iteration, the established model of a national showcase selected by committee has been abandoned in favour of appointing an independent curator and including the work of international artists in the exhibition, although the acquisitive award remains nationally focused. In addition, the show has been relocated from its previous home in the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ upper level Rudy Komon gallery to the ground floor, with entry directly from the vast main foyer. In conjunction with the reframing of the exhibition’s scope and to a degree its function, this appears to point to an overall repositioning of the Anne Landa Award within the Gallery’s programme towards engaging a broader audience.
Under these revised circumstances, Melbourne-based curator Victoria Lynn brought together works by three Australian and three international artists that explore self-representation and identity through the lens of transformation and masquerade. The dominant medium is video, with digital photography and multi-media installation also included. Disappointingly, only one project represents the more experimental media practices being engaged by Australian artists: Mari Velonaki’s interactive installation using robotic technology, part of her ongoing Fish-Bird series developed in collaboration with scientists David Rye and Steve Scheding from the Centre for Social Robotics. In Circle D: Fragile Balances (2008) viewers are invited to hold two sense-responsive wooden cubes that have embedded screens and can communicate with one another using Bluetooth wireless technology. The cubes represent the characters Fish and Bird