The 2007 Anne & Gordon Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarships
Artist: JESS MACNEIL
Opera House Steps December 2006
still from digital video
duration 2 minutes, 28 seconds
view the video
© the artist
The Shape of Between 2006
still from digital video
duration 12 minutes, 59 seconds
view the video
© the artist
The strangeness in Jess MacNeil’s videos is subtly created through her use of digital manipulation. She removed the people who animate the steps of the Sydney Opera House, but left their shadows. Surprisingly, the result is something that could be described as visual music. Possibly this is because the parallel lines of the steps suggest the staves of a musical score, on which the dark fragmented shapes ascend and descend like the notes on a scale. Their rippling movement is in itself musical, like a piano trill. They contrast dramatically with the twilight serenity of boats on a still stretch of the Ganges River in The Shape of Between. The slightly slowed motion of the boats is cyclical, eventually returning them to the point where they began.
The title of that slow and lyrical passage gives some indication of MacNeil’s approach to filmmaking, and emphasises that her intentions are more abstract than narrative. Both of the backgrounds she used, the hard regular steps and the formless expanse of water fill the frame completely. Movement pervades every part, like a non-figurative colour-field canvas with a composition that is literally dynamic. It seems quite logical that MacNeil is also a painter.
Timothy Morell
from his Samstag catalogue essay;
Loose connections
| Born 1977, Nova Scotia, Canada | ||
| 2004 | Master of Visual Arts, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney | |
| 1998 | Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours), Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney | |
| Awards | 2007 | Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship |
| 2006 | Fauvette Loureiro Memorial Artists Travelling Scholarship Australia Council, new work grant |
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| 2005 | Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship | |
| 2003 | Zelda Stedman Young Artist Scholarship | |
| 2002 | NSW Ministry for the Arts, NSW artists marketing grant | |
| Individual Exhibitions | 2006 | The Shape of Between, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney; and Elastic residence, London |
| 2005 | Plant, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney | |
| 2004 | The Rate of Forgetting, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney | |
| 2003 | Tenuous Ground, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney | |
| 2002 | Souvenir, Gallery Wren, Surry Hills, Sydney | |
| Selected Group Exhibitions | 2006 | Strange Times, The Art Organisation, International Gallery,
Liverpool, United Kingdom Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship, Artspace, Sydney Flaming Youth, Orange Regional Gallery, Orange Art and Football at the German Bundestag, Berlin, Germany gbk @ Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne FIFA World Cup Art Posters, Multiple Box, Sydney; and Goethe Institute, Sydney Material Witness: Representations of Space, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Project Space, Adelaide |
| 2005 | Translation, Gallery 101, Melbourne Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship, Artspace, Sydney Freedman Foundation Awards, Sir Herman Black Gallery, University of Sydney International Painting on Paper, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney Emerging Artists, Span Galleries, Melbourne |
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| 2004 | Two for One Two, MOP Projects, Sydney The Year in Art, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney Perception, Conception, Deception, Soapbox Gallery, Brisbane |
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| 2003 | The Year in Art, S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney Two for One, MOP Projects, Sydney Julie Fragar, Jessica MacNeil, Shaan Syed, Grunt, Vancouver, Canada |
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| 2002 | Surveillance, Firstdraft, Sydney Deskjob, Mori Gallery, Sydney |
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| 2001 | Space, Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney | |
| 2000 | Magic Bullet Theory, Imperial Slacks, Sydney | |
| Collections | Hamilton Regional Gallery, Victoria Gadens Lawyers Corporate Collection, Brisbane |