The Space Between Us – Anne Landa Award 2013

Overview

It feels like performance art is everywhere lately. 13 Rooms was the talk of the town last month and the Museum of Contemporary Art has recently finished Workout, its fantastic, week-long performance extravaganza. These days, you can't even walk into the MoMA without finding Tilda Swinton taking a disco nap in a glass case.

The Space Between Us, on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is part of the biennial Anne Landa Award and features the work of Lauren Brincat, Alicia Frankovich, Laresa Kosloff, Angelica Mesiti, Kate Mitchell, James Newitt and Christian Thompson, seven artists exploring the relationship between performance and video art. Devoted to supporting artists who work with the moving image and new technologies, it's an acquisitive award of $25,000 (which means the winning work enters the gallery’s collection). The prize was established in 2004 in honour of Anne Landa, a former trustee of the gallery.

It's a terrifically interesting exhibit and I loved all the works on display. The selection of artists is great, and their pieces complement each other wonderfully. Nearly all of the works also use their video screens in innovative and exciting ways. Sydney-based Kate Mitchell's piece is made up of several screens slotted together to make a large, geometric shape. The content of the video (the artist repeatedly throws herself through a series of coloured glass panes) and the large scale in which it’s presented creates a slightly unsettling effect, but there’s something quite comical about the slapstick way she throws herself through the pane. It was my favourite work in the show.

The exhibition also includes once-daily performances, promising a somewhat circus-like, two-month long program of ‘tambourine players, women on horseback, groups of people testing their physical endurance and other unexpected encounters’.

While it is a wonderful exhibition, coming on the heels of the uber experience that was 13 Rooms, it can be a little underwhelming. It's an unfair comparison, as The Space Between Us is primarily devoted to examining the intersection between video art and performance art, as opposed to 13 Rooms' pure performance focus. However, you can’t help but draw a parallel between the two. It lacks the punch and the vigour of 13 Rooms, but nonetheless it remains well worth a visit.

Image from Lucky break by Kate Mitchell.