The home is not what it used to be...
The Dwelling
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International artists explore the ghostly inhabitations of the ‘home’ in a new group show presented as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival.
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A deluge of water floods from the windows of a gothic, Pennsylvanian house in David Haines and Joyce Hinterding’s House 2; a young woman is lured menacingly by the ghost of herself in the film The Likening by David Noonan and Simon Trevaks; and former inhabitants of a German housing estate, once used to house Nazi construction workers and displaced persons in post-World War 2 Europe, discuss their former home in Michaela Melián’s Föhrenwald.
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The Dwelling, curated by ACCA’s Artistic Director Juliana Engberg and organised by Hannah Mathews for MIAF 2009, brings together a series of spooky works from leading contemporary artists, each exploring the surreal, the haunted and the very strange.
A major feature of the exhibition is Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s Opera for a Small Room. Inspired by the curious and unknown ‘R. Dennehy’, the owner of a collection of opera records Cardiff and Bures Miller purchased from a second-hand store in British Columbia, the work imagines an anonymous music lover’s hermit like homelife. In this work, audiences can peer into, but not enter, an intriguing, dusty, shambolic room containing over 2,000 records and twenty-four antique loudspeakers that emanate arias, sounds and occasional pop tunes. The room is also occupied by a mysterious, moving shadow…
Also included in the exhibition is Belgian-born artist Chantal Akerman’s film L'Homme à la valise (The Man with a Suitcase) which captures the anxiety and paranoia of an apartment dweller as she locks herself away in her room for 28 days rather than deal with an unwanted guest. Less menacing is the work Familiars by German artist, Sofia Hultén, where members of the artist’s family dress as poltergeists and devise absurd situations intended to frighten each other.
“Domestic bliss!? Forget it…these dwellings shake, rock and roll the senses in a phantasmic encounter of psychological dimensions…prepare to be domestically deranged!,” says Juliana Engberg.
Artists included in The Dwelling are Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Chantal Akerman, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, David Haines & Joyce Hinterding, Michaela Melián, Callum Morton, David Noonan & Simon Tevaks, Sofia Hultén and Calum Stirling.
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The Dwelling
Friday 9 October – Sunday 29 November 2009.
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 111 Sturt Street, Southbank.
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Friday 10am-5pm, Weekends 11am–6pm. Mondays by appointment.
Tel: 03 9697 9999. Admission: Free. www.accaonline.org.au
For further media information:
Katrina Hall on 03 9697 9999,
mobile 0421 153 046
or email kathall@ozemail.com.au
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