Red Green Blue: A History of Australian Video Art brings together more than 60 works from the 1970s through to the present day, highlighting the many possibilities offered by the medium, in terms of form, content and interaction with other disciplines. Drawn from archives, artist holdings and the Griffith University Art Collection, this exhibition takes the viewer on a historical journey that is also a celebration of the ongoing dynamism and depth of Australian video art practice.
Emerging as an art form during the late 1960s and 1970s, video has continued into the twenty-first century as a prominent mode of artistic endeavor, with artists embracing and responding to the new possibilities opened up by recent advances in technology. While existing literature around the history of video art in the Euro-American context is substantial, establishing sightlines to Australian moving image heritage has proved more challenging. Characterized by a ‘radical forgetting’, the scarcity of documentation and the fragility of the technology with its ever-changing formats, has created a substantial gap in local knowledge: a situation Red Green Blue seeks to address.
From its earliest days, artists have embraced video’s radical potential – as a medium for artistic expression, a tool for political agitation, and a means with which to question the status quo. Red Green Blue explores these intersections across three themed episodes, each running for one month, tracing connections from early experimental origins through to the multiple and proliferating modes of today. When viewed together, this exhibition reasserts the importance of video to Australian art history, while at the same time embracing the complexities of this pluralistic medium.
Curator: Matthew Perkins
Episode 1: Red: Everything is Political (30 March to Saturday 29 April)
Episode 2: Green: Body, Technology, Action (2 May to Saturday 3 June).
Episode 3: Blue: Perception and Encounter (6 June to Saturday 8 July)
