baden pailthorpe | formations | online catalogue 2012
DESCRIPTION
Baden Pailthorpe | Formations | 26 July - 19 August 2012 | Martin Browne ContemporaryTRANSCRIPT
BADEN PAILTHORPEFORMATIONS
BADEN PAILTHORPE
FORMATIONS
26 July - 19 August 2012
© Martin Browne Contemporary© All images copyright Baden Pailthorpe
This catalogue is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.
COMPILER: Electra FoleyCOLOUR SEPARATIONS: Spitting Image, SydneyPRINTING: Southern Colour, SydneyISBN: 978-0-9872516-1-9
Cover Image: Very Few Good Men, 2012, HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 2 minutes, ed. 5 + 2 AP
LIST OF WORKS
Formation VII, 2012, two-channel HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 3 minutes 35 seconds, ed. 5 + 2 AP
HALO, 2012, two-channel HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 2 minutes 40 seconds, ed. 5 + 2 AP
Very Few Good Men, 2012, HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 2 minutes, ed. 5 + 2 AP
In his first solo exhibition with Martin Browne Contemporary, Baden Pailthorpe presents Formations, a series of three video and new media artworks that poetically subvert the politics and aesthetics of the military. Created by remixing Hollywood cinema and manipulating US military training simulators, Pailthorpe’s striking artworks make clear references to abstraction, landscape and performance – at the same time closely engaging with the classic military strategies of heightened perception, deception, camouflage and confusion.
In HALO, 2012, we are party to a graceful yet helpless moment, as both a US soldier and a Taliban fighter fall from the heavens over Afghanistan. The sky in this work acts as a blind witness to their beautifully doomed flight, levelling the folly of human conflict to the sublime and eternal indifference of nature. This two-channel video work derives its title from the military acronym, High Altitude Low Opening, and describes a specialised kind of military skydive. Pailthorpe plays on the poetic resonances that the word halo conjures, wedged uncomfortably between military jargon and spiritual transcendence.
Formation VII, 2012, mobilises similar visual poetry. The latest work in an ongoing series of ‘marching performances’, this two-channel video work is set within the US military’s simulated version of Afghanistan. Rather than using this training software to simulate violence or military encounter, instead Pailthorpe gives a group of soldiers the simplest of orders: walk. Through this minor gesture of resistance, a striking aesthetic of repetition from the simulator’s own code is revealed. The multiple of each individual body creates a kind of corporeal sculpture. As is prevalent in military vocabulary, reference to the collective body (such as the Marine Corps) connotes the machine-like structure and strength that follows a military formation of disciplined bodies. Perhaps the most universal and often political of human actions, walking is used by Pailthorpe as a device to uncover pockets of resistance from within even the most closed, controlled and constructed of environments: military simulations.
In contrast, Very Few Good Men, 2012, appropriates footage from a classic military film and pushes it to the limits of abstraction. In this work, the traditional Marine Corps drill is subject to the brutal treatment of contemporary remix culture and its own coded discipline. Here the military becomes the target of its own aesthetic strategies of uniform, camouflage and deception as the aesthetics of military ritual are subverted, inverted, perverted and corrupted to the point of absurdity. What remains is a stunning burst of visual and sonic energy that creates its own formations of aesthetic dominance and political rite.
BIOGRAPHY
Baden Pailthorpe is a young Australian interdisciplinary artist whose research-based art practice spans video, photography, gaming, sound, text and installation. His work engages with the political, cultural and conceptual potential of technologies in their most diverse forms.
Pailthorpe’s work has been widely exhibited and published, with close to thirty solo and group exhibitions, both in Australia and internationally. Currently, Baden Pailthorpe is a doctoral research candidate in the School of the Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, where he is a recipient of the prestigious Research Excellence Award and two other scholarships. His work has also been funded with grants from the Australia Council for the Arts, and the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA).
Formation VII, 2012, two-channel HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 3 minutes 35 seconds, ed. 5 + 2 AP
Formation VII, 2012, two-channel HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 3 minutes 35 seconds, ed. 5 + 2 AP
HALO, 2012, two-channel HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 2 minutes 40 seconds, ed. 5 + 2 AP
HALO, 2012, two-channel HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 2 minutes 40 seconds, ed. 5 + 2 AP
Very Few Good Men, 2012, HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 2 minutes, ed. 5 + 2 AP
Very Few Good Men, 2012, HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 2 minutes, ed. 5+ 2 AP
BADEN PAILTHORPE
Born 1984, Canberra, AustraliaLives and works in Sydney, Australia
EDUCATION
Current Doctor of Philosophy (Art, Media & Politics) The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia2011 Master of Fine Art (Art & New Media) l’Université Paris VIII, Vincennes — Saint-Denis, Paris, France2009 Master of Art (Photomedia) The College of Fine Arts, UNSW, Sydney, Australia2007 Bachelor of Arts - (French Studies, Arabic & Islamic Studies) The University of Sydney, Australia
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2012 Formations, Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney, Australia2012 Lingua Franca, Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney, Australia 2010 Twist, Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney, Australia2010 Other v2.0, Inflight A.R.I, Hobart, Australia2010 Other v2.0, Kings A.R.I., Melbourne, Australia2008 Translocality, Oh Really Gallery, Sydney, Australia
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2013 Ludic Dissonance (working title), Screen Space, Melbourne, Australia (Curatorial project)2012 Café des Espérances, Kunstfort bij Vijfhuizen, The Netherlands2012 FILE 2012, Sao Paulo, Brazil2012 Yes, We’re Open, The Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk), Amsterdam, The Netherlands2012 HRAFF, No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne, Australia2012 Action Frame, Elita Milano, Teatro Franco Parenti, Milan, Italy
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS (CONTINUED)
2012 Game Change, Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia, USA2011 Prosume This, BEKO, Berlin, Germany2011 Pixel Pops!, Galerie Nouvel Organon, Paris, France2011 Poles Apart, Blindside Gallery, Melbourne, Australia2011 Firstdraft 25, Firstdraft Gallery, Sydney, Australia2011 Monobandes II, Les Territoires, Montréal, Canada2011 Lingua Franca, Re-new Digital Arts Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark2011 Twist, Games Culture Circle, HBC, Berlin, Germany2009 Doug Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize, Online exhibition, Sydney, Australia2009 Mugshots, Oh Really Gallery, Sydney, Australia2009 COFA Annual, College of Fine Arts, UNSW, Sydney, Australia2009 Winter Set, Marker Gallery, Melbourne, Australia
GRANTS AND AWARDS
2012 Curator Mentorship Initiative (with Screen Space), National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA)2012 Research Excellence Award, Ph.D Scholarship, UNSW2011 Faculty Top-Up Ph.D Scholarship, Arts & Social Sciences, UNSW2011 Australian Post-Graduate Award (APA), 3 year Ph.D Scholarship, UNSW2011 New Work (emerging) Grant, The Australia Council for the Arts, Australia2011 1st Place, Masters by Research (Arts Plastiques), l’Université Paris VIII, France2009 The Dean’s List for Academic Excellence, College of Fine Arts, UNSW2009 Doug Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize (Semi-Finalist)
