Continuing the Contemporary Australian Solo series of annual exhibitions by Australian artists at critical moments in their practice, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art is pleased to be presenting a major solo exhibition by Tina Stefanou, a Greek-Australian artist who works with experimental forms of performance, film, sculpture, ethnographic research and socially engaged practice.
Tina Stefanou: You Can’t See Speed attends to the interconnected and multisensory experience of film beyond vision. The exhibition continues Stefanou’s interest in the voice as medium; co-creative collaboration, communal gathering and breaking bread; and solidary between humans and animals. Her work is also known to challenge institutions of power and capitalism, embedding the commons – from the planetary to the everyday – and her diasporic, working-class ethic within her work and practice.
Presented across ACCA’s four galleries, Tina Stefanou: You Can’t See Speed transforms the building into a living instrument, merging its subterrain engines with the intimacy of voice, all within a haptic, tactile labyrinth of sculptures, films, live performances and dirt bikes. Altering perceptions and cultural hierarchies of sight and social access, the exhibition blurs the boundaries between vision-sound-touch to create an experiential landscape for blind, low vision and sighted audiences.
The exhibition centres a collaborative new commission with blind motorcycle mechanic and rider Matthew Cassar. Concerned with the ideals of collaboration and trust, coinciding with Cassar’s journey of riding dirt bikes in high performance contexts, the new film follows Cassar along a surrealist voyage of adrenalin and self-actualisation. Shot across Super 8, 16mm, digital and high-definition film stocks – tracing the material histories of motion picture – the work interrogates notions of speed, long-euro-modernity and mechanical process captured on film, from Eadweard Muybridge’s images of the horse in movement to the machismo of contemporary motorcycle racing. Accompanying the film is a large-scale, site-specific stunt ramp emblazoned with totemic and ritualistic symbols such as evil eyes, crystals and rosettes, designed to protect from and ward against threats, both imagined and tremendously real.
Alongside the new commission, Stefanou presents a modified configuration of her body of cinematic performance works. Featuring rural and regional collaborators, the films form a complex ecology of multispecies, class realities and rural poetics, from migrant, farmer and youth perspectives. The multiple screens are scaffolded by a field of sculptural materials, from salted horse-hooves to found agri-materials, which trespass across the galleries shifting them into a metaphorical nervous system made up of more-than-human, animal and machine parts.
Curator: Elyse Goldfinch
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body, Arts House through the CultureLAB creative development program, and presented in partnership with West Space.
