Diary

Lines of thought

Antarctica 2002 Europe 2006 London 2006-7 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 April 2007- May 2010 May 2010 -

April 15, 2007. Newtown

Last night I went to the opening of "fivexFive", a show at COFA's Ivan Dougherty Gallery, curated by five people who work at the gallery and consisting of works by 25 staff members. Each curator chose five artists. John Hughes's work, "Epiphany on the family holiday" was the one work that captured my attention, that made me think and feel and catch my breath. He'd built a simple wooden car, and three primitive figures (a family) seated inside. Projected on their faces were moving images of eyes glancing and lights flickering, as they do on faces moving through city night lights. The car was place in front of a large, wide screen, cycling a movie of fast-cut street scenes, of words on billboards, advertisements, traffic and road signs. I suspect they were not randomly chosen, as the curator wrote in the catalogue, because they read grammatically correctly, evoking some level of subjective meaning. I know how carefully John constructs and edits. I was fascinated by the huge gap I felt between the primitive world of the wooden figures, and the street scene. I asked myself, which world is "real"? We can identify with the family inside the car, or the so-called real world on the screen. We can choose. And there is their a third view - our own interpretation. I liked how it was set up where people were entering and leaving...another Highway. And the lights from it flickered through the front window out into the street.