Nightshift (2001 - 2004) with Wendy McPhee
Installation view at Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Bond Store, 2001.
Photo by Simon Cuthbert.
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Nightshift is a large scale multiple screen video installation. Six life sized video projections of Wendy McPhee’s emotive performances flicker across a grid of veil-like screens installed within the darkness of the gallery. Walking through the installation the viewer is surrounded by these evocative and disturbing images that fracture the space leaping from one screen to another, continually shifting our center of attention around the space.
Borrowing from the urban mythology of subliminal advertising these images are inter-cut with a cascade of words and phrases that flicker in and out of view, riding on the threshold of our perceptions and triggering off rapid stream of conscious and subconscious readings.
Through the central character of the video images, performer Wendy McPhee draws viewers into a series of overlapping meditations on the themes of femme performance, solitude and longing, incorporating an eclectic range of imagery from Karaoke bar pop-music fantasies, to voyeuristic peepshow and surveillance style footage.
Reversed texts confound preconceptions about the correct perspective from which to view the images, encouraging audiences to observe from numerous perspectives: front, behind, sideways, and through different layers of projected imagery.
George Khut’s accompanying soundtrack creates a trance-like atmosphere blending slowly undulating layers of mechanical clicks and pulses with the sounds of distant bar room ambience and mysteriously indecipherable whispers.
Installation view of _Nightshift_ video installation at Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Bond Store, 2001. Photo by Simon Cuthbert.
Production credits
George Khut: installation concept, videography, texts and sound design
Wendy McPhee: installation concept, performance, texts and costumes
Exhibition dates
October 30-November 16, 2003, in Dancers are Space Eaters- 03 (curated by Sarah Miller), Perth Instiitute of Contemporary Art (PICA), Perth, Australia.
February 13-16, 2003, in Inbetween Time: Festival of live art & intrigue, (curated by Helen Cole), Arnolfini, Bristol, UK.
August 22–September 14, 2002, (curated by Nick Tsoutas), Artspace, Sydney, Australia.
July 13–28, 2002, (curated by Bill Bleathman), Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Australia.
October 4–10, 2001, prototype installation (presented by Carnivale, Multicultural Arts Festival), Performance Space, Sydney, Australia.
Installation view of Nightshift video installation at Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Bond Store, 2001. Photo by Simon Cuthbert.
Acknowledgments
Nightshift has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council (New Media Arts Fund), its arts funding and advisory body.
Nightshift was presented at PICA by Softcore Inc. Softcore Inc. was assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Premier, Minister for the Arts.