Friday, July 15, 2016

Gertrude Street Projection Festival 2016

Tonight was the opening of the Gertrude Street Projection Festival for 2016. Once again there were many interesting pieces created for this year's festival, and the addition of the Atherton Gardens as its very own precinct.

The large building projections are always very popular attractions. Ian De Gruchy's Digital Op Pop was a kaleidoscope of color and design. The Atherton Towers were lit up by Jacob Tolo and Susan Maco Forrester's Fractures, which explored identity and whiteness. The Builders Arms Hotel was utilised by Kate Geck for her work Apeiron on the effects of technology on people's attention spans.

Gertrude Street Projection Festival
Ian De Gruchy
Gertrude Street Projection Festival
Jacob Tolo and Susan Maco Forrester
Gertrude Street Projection Festival
Kate Geck

Geometric shapes were evident in a few pieces. Kit Webster's Morphic Prism is a pyramidal video installation of a recursive reflection tunnel. Lauren Simmonds utilised sculpture and projections in her piece The State of Becoming. Skunk Control were back again this year with Systematic Sanctions, which contained a little urban landscape on a hill that had lights going on and off in the houses.

Gertrude Street Projection Festival
Kit Webster; Lauren Simmonds
Gertrude Street Projection Festival
Skunk Control

One of the more political pieces was Alfeo Sanches Pereira and Eneti Waretini's A Natural Resource Curse, an animation about the maritime boundary dispute between Australia and Timor-Leste.

Gertrude Street Projection Festival
Alfeo Sanches Pereira and Eneti Waretini

Finally, some of my favorites were filmed pieces featuring women. Youjia Lu's Chora showed the artist as a bath gradually filled with water. Petrina Hicks' Gloss featured a butterfly flapping its wings in slow motion while perched on a woman's mouth. The highlight of the festival for me though was Luzena Adams' piece Reverie with its graceful redhead swimming underwater and dipping in and out of the top and bottom of the frame.

Gertrude Street Projection Festival
Youjia Lu; Petrina Hicks
Gertrude Street Projection Festival
Luzena Adams

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