The medium is the message’. We are reminded of Marshall McLuhan’s famous remarks about television in the catalogue essay which accompanies the group exhibition, ‘Satellite of Love (I like to watch things on TV)’, at the Melbourne artist-run initiative, Bus Gallery. However, as the paintings, drawings, videos and photographs in this exhibition explore the interrelationships between TV and other visual forms, Satellite of Love shows us that this idea of television as a discrete medium and a distinct mode of communication has become highly problematic. With this exhibition Bus continued its programme of supporting local, national and international artists and curators, and presented the work of eleven young Sydney artists, Mariusz Jastkowiak, Phil Williams, George Tilianakis, Peter Newman, Kenzee Patterson, Rebecca Lewis, Ivan Lisyak, Jemima Isbester, Luis Martinez and the Motel Sisters (Liam Benson and Naomi Oliver), all of whom share an interest in the televisual. Formerly seen at Phatspace in Sydney, the works in Satellite of Love variously play with the language and forms of TV to engage with its pervasive impact upon other aspects of visual culture.
Kenzee Patterson’s photograph, CP28WF2 (2005), establishes a connection between TV and photography that highlights their common relation to a perpetually deferred presence. Patterson photographs ‘the death throes of the TV’ at the moment when it is switched off to leave us with the ghost of an image which once glowed with artificial life. The light which illuminates this translucent C-type photograph from behind emphasises this ethereal and haunting quality as it mimics the fading glow of the TV screen. The double meaning of the word ‘medium’ here aptly describes both television and photography.1 As media for channelling ghosts