The 2008 Anne & Gordon Samstag
International Visual Arts Scholarships
Artist: HAYDEN FOWLER
Goat Odyssey 2006
(production still 2)
photographer Michael Randall
View the video
© the artist
Hunger 2007
still from digital video
duration 15 minutes, 40 seconds
View the video
© the artist
Nursling III 2006
mounted digital photograph
80 x 120 cm
photographer Michael Randall
© the artist
Hayden Fowler’s stills and videos also have a strong sense of theatrical narrative. Fowler’s animals operate instinctively within a highly sanitised set or background, but represent aspects of human nature.
Fowler grew up observing animals on his grandparents’ farm in New Zealand. His first degree was a Bachelor of Science (biology), and the work expresses real empathy with his subjects. These short films are very hands on – Fowler builds the sets, choreographs the action and films and edits the final work. He also manages the animals - the cast for Hunger were in his Sydney studio for days.
In Goat Odyssey, two brocaded goats move through a highly artificial and sterile set (tiled walls like a bathhouse, green carpeted floor, and industrial fan on the back wall). Doors to off stage are built into the set. Frames move on a non-sequential basis, showing goats variously entering, leaving, standing, performing, or on the small stage at the back of the set. At times a goat paws – one foot, then the other - expressing something of the frustration and repression inherent in the ambiguous narrative. While goats are an archetype, and have long been part of human history (our only longer history with animals is in our relationship with dogs), they may symbolise fertility, vitality, energy.
In Fowler’s odyssey, the movements of frames are labyrinthine, a reference to the non linearity of computer games. The seemingly pointless and random sequence also evokes the human condition. Photographic stills, shot independently as separate works from the video, incorporate a man, naked but for a loin cloth which matches the goats’ drapery.
Hunger also takes as its subject sexuality and desire. In this double-framed sequence, on the right, another tiled background – this time dark – drips milk from an invisible teat in the wall. Here the milk drips and pools whitely on the black tiles, wasted. In the frame on the left, lambs come and go from a similar teat, falling to their knees in the way of lambs, tails wagging feverishly with the joy of hunger sated.
There is a political dimension to Fowler’s narratives. Hunger’s lambs parallel the profligate waste of the first world with the desperate poverty of the third. The goats in Goat Odyssey, the mice driven through the set in White Australia, and the cock in White Cock are following an imposed order, impotent and powerless despite the expression of instinctive behaviour.
Louise Martin-Chew
from her Samstag essay;
Alternative Realities
| Born 1973, Te Awamutu, New Zealand |
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| 2006 | Master of Fine Art, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney | |
| 2002 | Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours), College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney | |
| 1995 | Bachelor of Science, University of Waikato, New Zealand | |
| Awards | 2008 | Anne & Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship |
| 2006 | Australia Council, new work grant | |
| 2004 | Australian Postgraduate Award | |
| 2002 | University of New South Wales Honours Scholarship | |
| 2001 | Basil and Muriel Hooper Scholarship | |
| Individual Exhibitions | 2007 | Call of the Wild, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney |
| 2006 | AS SEEN ON TV, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney | |
| 2005 | White Australia, Elastic residence, London Product Placement, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney |
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| 2003 | Postcards from Utopia, University of New South Wales Roundhouse, Sydney | |
| 2002 | Progress in Harmony, Space 3, Sydney | |
| Selected Group Exhibitions | 2007 | Windows, Auckland Festival,
Auckland, New Zealand Eye to Eye, Dubbo Regional Gallery, Dubbo Hayden Fowler, Christchurch Art Gallery - Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Christchurch, New Zealand |
| 2006 | December Group, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney Pet Project, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; and Span Galleries, Melbourne Art and About, AMP building, Sydney Flaming Youth, Orange Regional Gallery, Orange The Idea of the Animal, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne gbk @ Melbourne Art Fair, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne Sowing Seeds, Dubbo Regional Gallery, Dubbo White Australia, Dubbo Regional Gallery, Dubbo |
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| 2005 | GBK@SPAN, Span Galleries, Melbourne Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship, Artspace, Sydney Selekta, West Space, Melbourne Sunshine Policy, Blue Oyster Gallery, Dunedin, New Zealand |
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| 2004 | Beautiful Garbage, Cheongju Art Centre, Cheongju, South Korea Australian Artists, Pici Gallery, Seoul, South Korea |
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| 2003 | Tale-chaser, Gallery 4A, Sydney Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship, Artspace, Sydney |
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| 2002 | In the Flesh, Firstdraft , Sydney Expo, Imperial Slacks, Sydney |
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| 2001 | MINT, College of Fine Arts, Sydney Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship, Artspace, Sydney Fusion, Melbourne Film Festival, Melbourne Eat My Shorts, Performance Space, Sydney |
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| 2000 | Downwardly Mobile, Imperial Slacks, Sydney | |
| Collections | Wollongong University Dubbo Regional Gallery |