WHEN : 26 February – 19 March 2011
WHERE : BOXCOPY
A joke involves me, you and someone else. One of us is going to get hurt.
This exhibition involves two video works by Melbourne artist Kel Glaister—each a playing out of familiar gags. With the title derived from something Jerry Lewis once said, this exhibition revolves around the route of laughter. We laugh something, or someone. Not just in the direction of, but at the expense of. There’s a tinge of guilt sometimes, but that makes the laughter stronger. These videos bounce off the format of the joke to implicate the viewer, catching them in antisocial giggles and a cruelty that was just below the surface before. This work was made thorough a residency at the Cite International des Arts in Paris (remove comma) in 2010, undertaken with the support of the Australia Council for the Arts Skills and Arts Development Grant Residency.
Kel Glaister graduated from Monash University in 2005, and since then her work has been exhibited in almost all the ARIs in Melbourne—most recently Busting out at Conical—as well as in solo and group shows nationally and internationally. Glaister also curates, most recently the exhibition A quarter turn on every screw at Kings ARI, and she was one of the curators of Objects in Space for the 2008 Next Wave Festival. She was also a studio artist at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces from 2008-2010 and on the committee of Kings ARI for over two years. Glaister recently undertook an Australia Council Residency at the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, and she is currently in Germany taking part in the 17th International Studio Program of the ACC Galerie Weimar, On Dilettantism.
