07.25.2011

07.25.2011 obligated

07.25.2011

07.25.2011

07.25.2011

07.25.2011 here i am

07.24.07

07.24.2011 studio

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Oh Michigan, Michigan, Lake Michigan

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Image from Shaun Gladwell's video Apologies 1 - 6, 2007-09

I saw this piece a couple of weeks ago at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT. I have been thinking about it a lot. It is one of two videos in the show from Gladwell's "MADDESTMAXIMVS" series. The figure dressed in black is holding the corpse of a kangaroo that had been struck by a vehicle. Everything is slow and looks hot. When there are big trucks that go by in the video it feels like they are never going to pass. I sat a long time with this video. I wonder how the kangaroos smelt. The figure in black shoos away the flies and picks up the kangaroo. Each time is as deliberate and careful as the time before. The kangaroo is brought to the middle of the road they pause, the figure in black leans in closer to the kangaroo and then they drift off screen to the right.

"Gladwell's Apologies refers most strongly to contemporary Australian issues - the destruction and deforestation of the land in the name of progress. Even more, through interaction with the kangaroo, Gladwell symbolically apologizes to the indigenous peoples of Australia who were mistreated under colonization." - Patricia Hickson, Emily Hall Tremaine Curator of Contemporary Art

This piece was presented by Gladwell for the 2009 Venice Biennale a year after the Australian government issued a formal apology to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island families.

Shaun Gladwell's videos are currently on view in the Matrix space until September 18, 2011.

(The color is off in this image, sorry about that.)