Shaun Gladwell | Eva Koch | Sahar Hosseinabadi

During April, SCA graduate Shaun Gladwell, Danish artist Eva Koch and Master of Visual Arts candidate Sahar Hosseinabadi will present a series of video installations in the SCA Galleries. The exhibitions will open on Wednesday 8 April, 6 to 8pm.

Tangara (2003), a video installation by Gladwell, displays the artists athletic interest and invokes a sense of weightlessness. His work critically engages personal history, memory and contemporary cultural phenomena through performance, video, painting and sculpture. Gladwell will represent Australia at the 2009 Venice Biennale with his work MADDESTMAXIMVS.

Headwind was filmed by Koch in Nuuk, the main city of Greenland. The exhibition depicts a fictional meeting between family members, who due to colonization live far apart. This fate is shared with many other families. Koch's installation Augusta, features two video projections facing each other. A meeting is staged between Augusta, filmed in Denmark, and most of her family, filmed in Greenland, who literally ‘move forward’ to meet her. Even though the meeting is fictional and only takes place in an artistic dimension, it is moving nonetheless.

Koch's work varies from the clearly defined, concrete sculptural element to the immaterial seduction of the video image to the invisible interference of the sound work. Simplicity is characteristic of her work. The works are site-specific and installed in such a way as to relate actively to the space around them, often with an interactive dimension.

H2O's Carrier Presents Blind Knotted, a mixed media and video installation by Hosseinabadi, represents her personal experiences of cultural change and the difficulties associated with this both in Iran and Australia. Through Blind Knotted Hosseinabadi clarifies her dilemma of culture and background. She takes on the role of Goldfish, the central character in her video, who struggles to break the bonds to her past and accept the new life she has chosen.

Tangara (2003), Headwind and H2O's Carrier Presents Blind Knotted will be on display at Sydney College of the Arts from Thursday 9 April to Sunday 3 May 2009. Opening Wednesday 8 April, 6 to 8pm.
Gallery hours: Wednesday to Friday, 11am to 5pm. Saturday to Sunday, 11am to 4pm. Closed Good Friday, Easter Saturday and Sunday.

Images: (top to bottom) Eva Koch, Augusta, 2008. Video installation, still from video, 6:00 min; Sahar Hosseinabadi, H2O's Carrier Presents Blind Knotted, 2009. Video installation, still from video; Shaun Gladwell, Tangara, 2003. Production still, videography: Gotaro Uematsu, photography: Josh Raymond. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery.