Grant Stevens, Clinton Watkins | Video Contemporary, Sydney Contemporary 2013

Starkwhite will present video works by Grant Stevens (AUS) and Clinton Watkins (NZ) in Video Contemporary, the section of Sydney Contemporary curated by Mark Feary.

Grant Stevens

Supermassive, 2013
Four-channel video
Colour and sound
11 mins, 19 secs

Grant Stevens is known for his pithy text-based videos exploring vernacular and mass media truisms and recalling advertising, movie trailers and relaxation videos. Stevens trades in clichés, platitudes and stock phrases but points to their richness, probing the overlap between mass media fictions and everyday reality. While some of his works play on language’s slipperiness others emphasise its hyper-lucidity. Against the backdrop of modern life’s impossibly hyperactive schedules, his new works go fishing for personal reflection, self-expression, self-help, new age spirituality and other ways to get a grip.

Clinton Watkins
Continuous Ship #1, 2003
SD video
Colour and sound
11 mins, 28 secs (excerpt)

Clinton Watkins produces artwork that investigates affects that combinations of sonic and visual information can have on an audience. The key conceptual issues of his work are drawn from an interest in constructing immersive experiences through the use of sound, colour and scale of installation incorporating video projection, television monitors and custom-made audio and video hardware. The visual and sound base of his work focuses on the characteristics, structures, phenomena, and processing of sonic and visual material through the exploration of repetition, distortion, duration and form via a minimalist sensibility.

Grant Stevens bio

Stevens’ recent exhibitions include: Seriously, Relax, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney (2012); Video Contemporary, Sydney Contemporary (2013); Burst, PICA, Perth (2010); Wobbly, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney (2009); Islands, Nature Morte, Berlin (2009); No Bad Days, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2008); Education, Education, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney (2007); Cliché and Collusion: Video Works by Grant Stevens, Museum of Art, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah ((2007); Going Steady, Starkwhite, Auckland (2007); and The Switch, Il Ponte Contemporanea, Rome (2007).

He has also been represented in group shows including: Word, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney (2009); Some Text Missing, CAST, Hobart (2009); The Leisure Class, the Australian Cinematheque, Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (2007); Anne Landa Award, Art Gallery of New South Wales (2006); and 2004: Australian Culture Now, National Gallery of Victoria (2004).

Clinton Watkins bio

Recent exhibitions include Delta, Air New Zealand In-Flight Entertainment System (2012-13); Transcode, Wellington City Art Gallery/Engine Room, Massey University (2012); Selection, Starkwhite (2012); Test Tone Aotea Centre, NZ (2011); Force Fields Two Rooms, NZ (2010); Line & Tone Hirschfeld, Berlin (2009); Avalanche NZ Film Archive (2009); and Cont Ship #1- #3/New New Wave #1-#2 Square 2, Wellington City Art Gallery (2008). His work has also been featured in curated group exhibitions throughout New Zealand, Australia and Europe including: Wall of Sound Te Tuhi (2010); Under Lopdell House (2010); Super Deluxe Artspace Sydney (2010); Black Out I.C.A.N. Sydney (2010); 7:5 Two Rooms, NZ (2009); Past-Present-Place Heidelberger Kunstverein, DE (2008); Martini Shot Artspace (2007); 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Auckland City Art Gallery (2006).

Watkins is also a practicing experimental musician who regularly produces and performs as a solo artist and collaboratively as an active member of the minimal electronic improvisation sextet, Plains, one half of the electronic noise duo 1000 and most recently working with artist Santiago Sierra. Watkins has numerous releases of recorded material published on a variety of local and international record labels such as Circle, 20 City, Claudia, Mystery Sea, CMR, Absurd and Scarcelight. Watkins has a Doctoral Degree in Fine Arts, lecturers at AUT in the Co_lab department teaching time-based media.