Nau mai, haere mai, welcome to EyeContact. You are invited to respond to reviews and contribute to discussion by registering to participate.

JH

New Gregory Bennett Videos

AA
View Discussion
Still from Gregory Bennett's Nature Morte (2017) HD video, 13 minutes, 22 seconds, looped. Still from Gregory Bennett's Nature Morte (2017) HD video, 13 minutes, 22 seconds, looped. Still from Gregory Bennett's Nature Morte (2017) HD video, 13 minutes, 22 seconds, looped. Still from Gregory Bennett's Nature Morte (2017) HD video, 13 minutes, 22 seconds, looped. Still from Gregory Bennett's Nature Morte (2017) HD video, 13 minutes, 22 seconds, looped. Still from Gregory Bennett's Nature Morte (2017) HD video, 13 minutes, 22 seconds, looped. Installation of Gregory Bennett's Nature Morte (2017). Photo: Sam Hartnett Installation of Gregory Bennett's Nature Morte (2017). Photo: Sam Hartnett Installation of Gregory Bennett's Nature Morte (2017). Photo: Sam Hartnett Installation of Gregory Bennett's Nature Morte (2017). Photo: Sam Hartnett Still from regory Bennett, Torsade III (2017) HD video, 8 minutes, 15 seconds, looped Still from Gregory Bennett, Torsade III (2017) HD video, 8 minutes, 15 seconds, looped Still from Gregory Bennett, Torsade III (2017) HD video, 8 minutes, 15 seconds, looped Still from Gregory Bennett, Torsade III (2017) HD video, 8 minutes, 15 seconds, looped Still from Gregory Bennett, Torsade III (2017) HD video, 8 minutes, 15 seconds, looped Installation of Gregory Bennett's Torsade III (2017). Photo: Sam Hartnett

The occasional arbitrary quality of Bennett's colour choices muddles the narrative in terms of categorisation, but underlines the movement and the artist's Godlike control. With such an emphasis, not only repetitive human behaviour is subject to mocking satire but also the ticks of art production, the controlling ethos of animation design, the mind of the artist him-or-herself.

Auckland

 

Gregory Bennett
Nature Morte

 

18 August-16 September 2017

In this latest moving image presentation from Gregory Bennett—upstairs in Two Rooms’ long gallery—there are two videos: the longer 13 minutes animated film Nature Morte on the end wall, and the shorter 8 minutes production Torsade III on a monitor near the top of the stairs.

For the former, to appreciate it properly you need to sit or stand a lot closer than the position of the one seat there indicates. It pays to be sneaky and move it closer a few yards, so the experience is more immersive.

These two recent works are very different:

Torsade III has a black background field while slowly ‘panning’ upwards through hovering rings, aligned in a tower formation, that support lines of naked men moving organically in Busby Berkley-style co-ordinated motion; Nature Morte has a grey backdrop of deep orthogonal space, while the ‘camera movement’ spirals back and forth horizontally. 

Torsade III has queues of robotic male dancers densely packed around the perimeter of each circular story, while in Nature Morte, the fitness-crazed bodies briskly trot around in fixed (repeatable) choreographic configurations, lie on the ground doing push-ups, or climb and descend steep staircases.

That in a sense Bennett is a kinetic artist who uses animation—not moving ‘real’ sculpture—for articulated android movement, here is the point, motion coordinated with concurrent movement of waving trees (leaves, or when inverted: roots), tapping and pounding machinery, and revolving cylinders or cubes nestled inside skeletal towers or gridded up oblongs. The constant visual pulse of different simultaneously throbbing components drives it along.

Both videos are loops, but one is in portrait format, the other landscape. The compositional structure of Nature Morte in particular transmutes over a period of a quarter of an hour, images first emerging from the bottom lefthand corner, expanding and spreading to dominate the entire horizontal screen for over fourteen minutes, and then finally shrinking to disappear out of the bottom righthand corner.

There is a playfulness about this emergence and withdrawal that bookends the work. It gives the video shape and drive. The sequencing within acquires an importance that allows different sections of figures—with buildings, orchards and machinery—to become distinctive and memorable, each portion acquiring its own significance so that it is looked forward to next time.

Bennett‘s colours hover in front of the rendered forms, and are flat and not volumetrically integrated as a plastic component. They are deliberately synthetic so that humans and, say, trees (sometimes on different parts of the same screen) are the same hue (in this case pale blue).

This sporadic arbitrary quality muddles the narrative in terms of categorisation, but underlines the movement and the artist’s Godlike control. With such an emphasis, not only repetitive human behaviour is subject to mocking satire but also the ticks of art production, the controlling ethos of animation design, the mind of the artist him-or-herself.

John Hurrell

Print | Facebook | Twitter | Email

 

Recent Posts by John Hurrell

JH
Séraphine Pick, Rider Instinct, installation view, Te Uru, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Te Uru. Photo by Sam Hartnett.

Fabulous Loosey-Goosey Pick

TE URU WAITAKERE CONTEMPORARY GALLERY

Titirangi


Séraphine Pick
Rider Instinct


31 August - 27 October 2024

JH
From Scratch poster

Celebrating From Scratch (with the help of Justin DeHart)

AUDIO FOUNDATION

Auckland

 

Justin DeHart, From Scratch, Reuben de Lautour, Phil Dadson



Elemental 


13 September 7.30 pm

JH
Billy Apple, Billy Apple® Self-Portrait, 2020. Full colour digital print on Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl 310gsm. Framed: 88h x 65.50w cm--as installed at Starkwhite with 5 ' 7  1/2", 1964 above it on the wall.

Young and Old Apples

STARKWHITE

Auckland

 

Billy Apple®
Progressives and Other Self-Portraits


31 August - 5 October 2024

JH
Richard McWhannell, A Horse with No Name, 2018-19, oil on linen on board, 1220 x 1540 mm

Compelling Facial Physiognomies

SEASON

Auckland

 

Richard McWhannell

Songs to the Suns

 

28 August - 21 September 2024