Shaun Wilson
Encyclopedia
Shaun Wilson is an Australian artist, film maker, academic and curator working with themes of memory, place and scale through painting, miniatures and video art. He teaches Video Production, Experimental Video and Media Theory in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University
and exhibits inter/nationally at artist run spaces, university galleries, contemporary art centres and art/moving image museums.
Shaun Wilson studied Fine Arts at RMIT University (BFA) between 1992-94 and then Monash University
(BFA hons) in 1995. In 2002 he moved to Hobart to undertake a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Media Arts (completed in 2005) at the University of Tasmania
. His dissertation was titled The Memory Palace: Scale, Mnemonics and the Moving Image, which translated the Roman mnemonic texts Ad herrenium and De memoria through video installation. In 2005 he moved back to Melbourne to work in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University, Melbourne where he specialises in the relationship between memory and place in the moving image and further, the role and theorisation of Video art
after 2000. He has also been a visiting Professor at the Hochshule der Medien Stuttgart
in 2006.
Since 1995, Wilson has held over 25 solo exhibitions/screenings and 160 group exhibitions/screenings at notable galleries including the National Centre of Contemporary Art Moscow
(2008), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
(2006), Bilbao
Arte (2006), Center for Contemporary Culture Barcelona
(2006), Presidential Government of the Canary Islands
(2006), Thailand
New Media
Arts Festival 05 (2005), Australian Centre for the Moving Image
(2005), Institute of Modern Art Brisbane
(2004), 24hrArt: NT Centre for Contemporary Art (2004), and the Centre on Contemporary Art Seattle (2003).
Wilson has delivered over 55 guest lectures on contemporary art and video art throughout Australia
and Europe. Video Art
production includes the Uber memoria Series I-XX1 (2006-07) composed of 210 video paintings filmed in Germany
, England
, Scotland
, U.S.
and Australia and the Gothic memoria series I-VII (2006-07) composed of 1000 video paintings filmed in Germany, UK, New Zealand
and Australia.
Wilson trained and worked as a painter throughout the 1990s undertaking medium and large-scale oil on canvas and also acrylic on vinyl paintings which addressed two concurrent themes: the politicalization of the image in the mass media and the politicalization of narrative in the mass media. Influences are drawn from Caravaggio
, Théodore Géricault
, Francisco Goya
, the political works of Andy Warhol
, Robert Rauschenberg
, and the butterfly paintings of Damien Hirst
.
Wilson began three noted series of miniatures: Crash, Disasters of Small, and The Empire of Small. These detailed works began as a response to the role of the scaled object in contemporary art and later evolved to embrace themes of memory and place through issues and tensions between narrativity. Materials used are both commercially manufactured model kits and scratch-built cardboard/plastic objects attached onto various types of vintage hard-cover books.
Wilson began using video from 1998 onwards as a temporal response and extension to painting. Works produced are categorised into series and sub-series. Since 2004 he has produced over 350 video artworks under the titles of Mnemoria series, The Memory Palace series, Filmic Memorials series I-IV and Uber Memoria I-VII/Proto. These particular works that Wilson himself describes as ‘video paintings’ explore the nature of memory and place through the moving image and its subsequent effect on autobiographical memory. In doing so, Wilson has deconstructed family home movies, vintage 8mm film, and found 9mm film and from late 2006 onwards he has incorporated these filmic images with High Definition Video (HDV
) to convey tensions of fractured memory. Film theorist Leon Marvell describes Wilson's later work in Photofile as 'an ambitious and exquisitely realised exploration of the tension between artifact and memory'[2] while other reviews, such as Diane Clausen in Realtime, have described his video art as 'hypnotic'[3]. Recent work examined how cinema and video art co-exist to what artist and writer Brendan Lee describes in Artlink as 'best illustrat[ing] how cinema can affect another medium and comment on it'[9].
In 2007 he produced two feature length video artworks Uber nocturnus and Uber Memoria Protus that reconfigure Gothic Romanticism through the moving image and how this impacts on theories of false memory and its effect on places. As an extension to the Gothic memoria video art series, Wilson wrote and has embarked on feature length independent films titled Gothic memoria (2008), Epic memoria (2009) and Locus memoria (2010). Each film is based on the reinvention of paintings and etchings by Francisco Goya and Caspar David Friedrich and adapted with Napoleonic Gothic narratives. Recent work has also included Uber Memoria X composed of ten large scale video works 'where Wilson re-addresses Australian Colonial Painting through video art'[10]
Filmic influences include Alfred Hitchcock
, Michel Gondry and Oliver Hirschbiegel. Videoart influences include Bill Viola
and Eija-Liisa Ahtila.
In 2007, his artwork 'Athenian Memory Palace' was included in Artwave Radio as part of the 1st Athens Biennial 2007.
Sonic influences include sound artists Phillip Glass, Phil Edwards, Philip Brophy
, and John Cage
and musicians Moby
and David Helfgott
.
movement called Vothic ('Video' and 'Gothic') in response to his investigations of Gothic Romanticism from research undertaken for the curated exhibition Australian Gothic: video art now.
, Melbourne. The intent of the venture was to introduce contemporary art to audiences who were not traditionally art focused. A total of 45 exhibitions by art students and emerging artists were held in the gallery between 1997-2002 at the three different sites that Indigo occupied between these periods. The second site was a derelict shopfront and residence previously used as a backstreet brothel also located in Burwood. The third and final site was a derelict two-storey Federation
shopfront and residency located in Camberwell
renovated by Adams and Wilson into a two-gallery floor space with studios and accommodation upstairs. It was also haunted. In 2001, Wilson left Indigo and Adams later closed the business in 2003.
Wilson was a curator at the Jackman Gallery in St.Kilda, Melbourne in 2000. Independent projects have included over 20 exhibitions in Melbourne, Seattle, Berlin
and Hobart
. These include Australian Gothic (2007) at Project Space/Spare Room, Melbourne and the Directors Lounge, Berlin (2007) and Post-Cinema touring Australia and Germany in 2007 and 2008.
(2004) and RMIT University (2005-). In 2006, he founded the International Conference on Film and Memorialisation series which held its inaugural conference at the University of Applied Sciences, Schwaebsich Hall, Germany. In addition, related ventures complementing the series were also founded by Wilson including the Film and Memory Research Network and the Film and Memory Quarterly refereed academic e-journal. Wilson is a contributing editor for both.
Other appointments include the Co-ordinator of the Digital Cinema Research Group (RMIT University), Co-coordinator of the Narrative and the Image Research Group (RMIT University) and the Deputy Co-orinator of the Place Research Network (University of Tasmania).
In 2002 he was awarded the prestigious Australian Postgraduate Award to undertake doctoral study at the University of Tasmania.
In 2005, Wilson wrote a series of lectures delivered in his 'Media Cultures' course at RMIT University which explored the evolution of technology through modernity and postmodernity. These formed the basis of further articles exploring the histo-philosophical nature of digital media, especially MP3 and iPod culture, as evidenced in the forthcoming e-book Post-Pod available in 2008.
Archive projects include the ten year Memory and Place Video Archive Project (2007-2017) started in December 2006 that aims to build a sizable archive of videoart from emerging and established artists who explore themes of memory and place, locational memory and locational identity through remembrance. This will be donated in 2017 to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image
and Rhizome
as a major filmic collection of international significance.
In 2006 he was the Program Coordinator of Higher Degrees by Research (MA and PhD) in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University, Melbourne (City) campus. Wilson is currently a Senior Lecturer in Video, Experimental Video and Media Theory (Modernity/Postmodernity) and coordinator of the Digital Cinema Research Group.
RMIT University
RMIT University is an Australian public university located in Melbourne, Victoria. It has two branches, referred to as RMIT University in Australia and RMIT International University in Vietnam....
and exhibits inter/nationally at artist run spaces, university galleries, contemporary art centres and art/moving image museums.
Biography
Monash University
Monash University is a public university based in Melbourne, Victoria. It was founded in 1958 and is the second oldest university in the state. Monash is a member of Australia's Group of Eight and the ASAIHL....
(BFA hons) in 1995. In 2002 he moved to Hobart to undertake a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Media Arts (completed in 2005) at the University of Tasmania
University of Tasmania
The University of Tasmania is a medium-sized public Australian university based in Tasmania, Australia. Officially founded on 1 January 1890, it was the fourth university to be established in nineteenth-century Australia...
. His dissertation was titled The Memory Palace: Scale, Mnemonics and the Moving Image, which translated the Roman mnemonic texts Ad herrenium and De memoria through video installation. In 2005 he moved back to Melbourne to work in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University, Melbourne where he specialises in the relationship between memory and place in the moving image and further, the role and theorisation of Video art
Video art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
after 2000. He has also been a visiting Professor at the Hochshule der Medien Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
in 2006.
Since 1995, Wilson has held over 25 solo exhibitions/screenings and 160 group exhibitions/screenings at notable galleries including the National Centre of Contemporary Art Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
(2008), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
The Australian Centre For Contemporary Art is a contemporary art gallery in Melbourne, Australia. The gallery is located on Sturt Street in the Melbourne Arts Precinct, in the inner suburb of Southbank....
(2006), Bilbao
Bilbao
Bilbao ) is a Spanish municipality, capital of the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. With a population of 353,187 , it is the largest city of its autonomous community and the tenth largest in Spain...
Arte (2006), Center for Contemporary Culture Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
(2006), Presidential Government of the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
(2006), Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
New Media
New media
New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
Arts Festival 05 (2005), Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Australian Centre for the Moving Image
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, or ACMI, is dedicated to the moving image in all its forms. It is located in Federation Square, in Melbourne, Australia, across four levels of the Alfred Deakin Building...
(2005), Institute of Modern Art Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
(2004), 24hrArt: NT Centre for Contemporary Art (2004), and the Centre on Contemporary Art Seattle (2003).
Wilson has delivered over 55 guest lectures on contemporary art and video art throughout Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and Europe. Video Art
Video art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
production includes the Uber memoria Series I-XX1 (2006-07) composed of 210 video paintings filmed in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Australia and the Gothic memoria series I-VII (2006-07) composed of 1000 video paintings filmed in Germany, UK, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
and Australia.
Painting
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
, Théodore Géricault
Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...
, Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
, the political works of Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
, and the butterfly paintings of Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
.
Miniatures
Video Art
HDV
HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV cassette tape. The format was originally developed by JVC and supported by Sony, Canon and Sharp...
) to convey tensions of fractured memory. Film theorist Leon Marvell describes Wilson's later work in Photofile as 'an ambitious and exquisitely realised exploration of the tension between artifact and memory'[2] while other reviews, such as Diane Clausen in Realtime, have described his video art as 'hypnotic'[3]. Recent work examined how cinema and video art co-exist to what artist and writer Brendan Lee describes in Artlink as 'best illustrat[ing] how cinema can affect another medium and comment on it'[9].
In 2007 he produced two feature length video artworks Uber nocturnus and Uber Memoria Protus that reconfigure Gothic Romanticism through the moving image and how this impacts on theories of false memory and its effect on places. As an extension to the Gothic memoria video art series, Wilson wrote and has embarked on feature length independent films titled Gothic memoria (2008), Epic memoria (2009) and Locus memoria (2010). Each film is based on the reinvention of paintings and etchings by Francisco Goya and Caspar David Friedrich and adapted with Napoleonic Gothic narratives. Recent work has also included Uber Memoria X composed of ten large scale video works 'where Wilson re-addresses Australian Colonial Painting through video art'[10]
Filmic influences include Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, Michel Gondry and Oliver Hirschbiegel. Videoart influences include Bill Viola
Bill Viola
Bill Viola is a contemporary video artist. He is considered a leading figure in the generation of artists whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media...
and Eija-Liisa Ahtila.
Sound Art
Wilson began to publish sound art in limited editions from 2003 onwards as companion works to video art. These are the sonic versions of a winder inquiry into memory and place with many source references appropriated from family recordings and related material. Tracks are organised into series and sub series divided into four major categories and as limited edition single and double CDs. In 2004, the track 'statica' was released as a compilation double CD 'People Doing Strange Things With Electricity Too' (1994) available on Comfortstand Records (USA) and launched at the Centre on Contemporary Art Seattle in early 2005.In 2007, his artwork 'Athenian Memory Palace' was included in Artwave Radio as part of the 1st Athens Biennial 2007.
Sonic influences include sound artists Phillip Glass, Phil Edwards, Philip Brophy
Philip Brophy
Philip Brophy, born in Reservoir, Melbourne 1959 is an Australian musician, composer, sound designer, filmmaker, writer, graphic designer, educator and academic.-Music:...
, and John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
and musicians Moby
Moby
Richard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...
and David Helfgott
David Helfgott
David Helfgott is an Australian concert pianist. He is as well known for having schizoaffective disorder as he is for his piano playing. Helfgott's life inspired the Oscar-winning film Shine, in which he was played by Geoffrey Rush....
.
New Video art movement
In December 2006, Wilson founded a video artVideo art
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
movement called Vothic ('Video' and 'Gothic') in response to his investigations of Gothic Romanticism from research undertaken for the curated exhibition Australian Gothic: video art now.
Curatorial ventures
In 1996, Wilson and Melbourne-based painter Monica Adams opened Indigo Studios, a private art school located in the suburb of BurwoodBurwood, Victoria
Burwood is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 17 km east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is largely the City of Whitehorse but includes the City of Monash in its south west corner. At the 2006 Census, Burwood had a population of 11,886.-History:The...
, Melbourne. The intent of the venture was to introduce contemporary art to audiences who were not traditionally art focused. A total of 45 exhibitions by art students and emerging artists were held in the gallery between 1997-2002 at the three different sites that Indigo occupied between these periods. The second site was a derelict shopfront and residence previously used as a backstreet brothel also located in Burwood. The third and final site was a derelict two-storey Federation
Federation
A federation , also known as a federal state, is a type of sovereign state characterized by a union of partially self-governing states or regions united by a central government...
shopfront and residency located in Camberwell
Camberwell, Victoria
Camberwell is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 9 km east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Boroondara. At the 2006 Census, Camberwell had a population of 19,637....
renovated by Adams and Wilson into a two-gallery floor space with studios and accommodation upstairs. It was also haunted. In 2001, Wilson left Indigo and Adams later closed the business in 2003.
Wilson was a curator at the Jackman Gallery in St.Kilda, Melbourne in 2000. Independent projects have included over 20 exhibitions in Melbourne, Seattle, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and Hobart
Hobart
Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...
. These include Australian Gothic (2007) at Project Space/Spare Room, Melbourne and the Directors Lounge, Berlin (2007) and Post-Cinema touring Australia and Germany in 2007 and 2008.
Academic appointments and ventures
Wilson has upheld a strong commitment to academia with teaching appointments at Swinburne University (2000-01), Box Hill Institute (2000-01), University of TasmaniaUniversity of Tasmania
The University of Tasmania is a medium-sized public Australian university based in Tasmania, Australia. Officially founded on 1 January 1890, it was the fourth university to be established in nineteenth-century Australia...
(2004) and RMIT University (2005-). In 2006, he founded the International Conference on Film and Memorialisation series which held its inaugural conference at the University of Applied Sciences, Schwaebsich Hall, Germany. In addition, related ventures complementing the series were also founded by Wilson including the Film and Memory Research Network and the Film and Memory Quarterly refereed academic e-journal. Wilson is a contributing editor for both.
Other appointments include the Co-ordinator of the Digital Cinema Research Group (RMIT University), Co-coordinator of the Narrative and the Image Research Group (RMIT University) and the Deputy Co-orinator of the Place Research Network (University of Tasmania).
In 2002 he was awarded the prestigious Australian Postgraduate Award to undertake doctoral study at the University of Tasmania.
In 2005, Wilson wrote a series of lectures delivered in his 'Media Cultures' course at RMIT University which explored the evolution of technology through modernity and postmodernity. These formed the basis of further articles exploring the histo-philosophical nature of digital media, especially MP3 and iPod culture, as evidenced in the forthcoming e-book Post-Pod available in 2008.
Archive projects include the ten year Memory and Place Video Archive Project (2007-2017) started in December 2006 that aims to build a sizable archive of videoart from emerging and established artists who explore themes of memory and place, locational memory and locational identity through remembrance. This will be donated in 2017 to the Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Australian Centre for the Moving Image
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, or ACMI, is dedicated to the moving image in all its forms. It is located in Federation Square, in Melbourne, Australia, across four levels of the Alfred Deakin Building...
and Rhizome
Rhizome
In botany and dendrology, a rhizome is a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, often sending out roots and shoots from its nodes...
as a major filmic collection of international significance.
In 2006 he was the Program Coordinator of Higher Degrees by Research (MA and PhD) in the School of Creative Media at RMIT University, Melbourne (City) campus. Wilson is currently a Senior Lecturer in Video, Experimental Video and Media Theory (Modernity/Postmodernity) and coordinator of the Digital Cinema Research Group.
External links
- Shaun Wilson Research Blog
- Shaun Wilson Saatchi Gallery Profile
- Shaun Wilson at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art 2005
- New06 Podcast interview of Shaun Wilson at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
- International Festival of Videoart of Valencia
- Comfortstand Records
- Small Black Box, Institute of Modern Art Brisbane
- In Transition Russia 2008, National Centre of Contemporary Art, Russian Federation
Texts by Shaun Wilson
See also
- List of Australian artists
- List of contemporary artists
- List of video artists
- Video artVideo artVideo art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...
- Gothic Romanticism