TV MOORE

SMOKE N' MIRRORS
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Sydney video artist, TV Moore, brought together three separate video works for his exhibition SMOKE N’ MIRRORS at Gertrude Contemporary. The exhibition’s two screen-based works, Urban SOS (2003) and Old Love in Song: in Death (2004), both self-portraits, had not previously been exhibited, while the wall projection, Burn Out (2003), was taken as an extract from Moore’s epic ten-channel video installation, The Neddy Project (2001-2004). Burn Out presented as a melancholic nocturne of haunting beauty. In it, Moore’s camera had documented the life of two billowing pillars of fire as they burn slowly towards death, creating an ephemeral cathedral of light. Urban SOS showed the trajectory of a flare as it rockets across a suburban day-lit sky before falling back to earth. Subjectivity has been strongly foregrounded in Moore’s work, nowhere more so than in Old Love in Song: in Death, where Moore addresses the viewer directly, disguised in the costume of a dead man and shrouded in smoke. He dramatically performs a liturgical anthem, sung in falsetto, alternating to a rustic children’s-song tribute to a favourite film-maker. SMOKE N’ MIRRORS dramatically emphasises the melancholic romanticism that is a hallmark of Moore’s work. Moore channels the grainy digital video aesthetic and the temporal dimension of his medium to produce moody, painterly meditations on self and mortality.

TV Moore graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 1999. In 2000 he exhibited his benchmark two channel video installation, Urban Army Man, at Artspace Sydney. In 2001 he was selected for Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. In March 2004, Moore exhibited his ten channel video installation, The Neddy Project, at Artspace. Other exhibitions for 2004 include Concrete 000 (with Shaun Gladwell) at the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; The Dead Zone at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; Gridlock, an international group exhibition at Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth; and I thought I knew but I was wrong: new video art in Australia, an Australian Centre for the Moving Image/Asialink touring exhibition. Moore is a recent recipient of the prestigious Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship. He is represented by Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney.

[Biographical information current as at June, 2004]

TV Moore: Smoke n’ Mirrors, 4 June – 26 June 2004,Text: Amanda Rowell
A5 catalogue, colour, 4 pages, $2.20