17 March - 9 April 95

NIGHT SKY

John Conomos

"Night Sky" was a three monitor video work that ran the length of the gallery. Each monitor was framed by neon signs that spelt out words in the mis-spellings of the artist's Greek Australian childhood - chocols for chocolate, minosaur for minotaur and liberary for library. Each screen carried a series of words and images that combined with each other variously as they went in and out of sync, generating various combinations and readings across the work, whilst different phrases and bits of dialogue emerged momentarily from the soundtrack. The images investigated various histories: a strong autobiographical element, footage of Duchamp in New York, the artist on the island of Kythera, footage from fifties Australian film representing immigrants, Marx Brothers skits, tableaux vivants of people facing each other separated by a swinging light-bulb, a person addressing another through a megaphone, someone peering through a telescope (these constructing the component parts of film, sight, sound, light and movement). All of these combined into a poetic meditation on the history of languages, of film, of art and stories of the artist and his family. The readings were manifold and slipped from one arena to another. For instance, Duchamp could be read as a founder of language based work, an artist who worked with movement, but also the artist as exile. "Night Sky" triggered lines of thought and reflection and engendered a multiplicity of readings allowing the viewer to tease out new connections, echoes and similarities.