Talk with Shaun Gladwell

On the occasion of his show at Lavomatique, the australian artist Shaun Gladwell will be at Mains d'Oeuvres to talk about his work and his interest for skate, hip-hop, graffiti, vélo BMX and break-dance.

“By establishing an analogy between BMX acrobatics, sign and drawing, Gladwell connects in an light and laconic way traditions and cultures which seemed impossible to bring together.”
Daniel Baumann
(Shaun Gladwell. Public space, translation and beauty', Art&Australia;, Vol. 44, No. 4 : Winter 2007)
Shaun Gladwell's video works present figures engaged in performative actions that articulate their relationship with facets of the urban environment. Gladwell's performers are mesmerising, their movement slowed down and thus somehow refined to reveal the subtle nuances and essential qualities of the activity. Video here is far more than a vehicle for the recording and re-presentation of such street choreography, or a means of its aesthetic ornamentation and self-conscious re-transmission as ‘art'. on the contrary, it is shown to be a performative, transformative, representational realm within which a matrix of relationships between performer, place, artist, viewer, popular media culture, politics and art history is traced and activated via the plasticity of moving-image technology.
Blair French
(Shaun Gladwell : In a Station of the Metro at Artspace Visual Arts Centre, sydney, 20 september — 20 october 2007)
Gladwell's projects show how we need spaces in which we encounter otherness and sameness, where we are at once confirmed and challenged — and this comes from not being certain, from not knowing everything around us, from a degree of surprise and the unusual as we go about our everyday lives. We need a city which we do not know, which we do not understand, which have not yet encountered, which is simultaneously, strange, familiar and unknown to us. We need public space which is always a surprise, a unique place, a stimulation. We need to accept the risk of not always knowing what lies around the corner, acknowledging that in our everyday lives there are — or should be — strange otherworlds in which we find newness, both around us and in ourselves. these everyday otherworlds are exactly those depicted, at times explicitly and at times implicitly, in the work of shaun Gladwell.
Iain Borden
(Shaun Gladwell : In a Station of the Metro at Artspace Visual Arts Centre, sydney, 20 september — 20 october 2007)
Gladwell's gestures explore experience from a ‘proprioceptive' point of view (how we feel gravity, being upside down, rolling, etc.) while the psychological element is minimal. By ‘rolling' instead of ‘strolling', he collapses movement and repetition into one space (on the internet, for example, we journey, yet are still) so that the drift has no narration — it is an endless exercise in gesture. In Gladwell's works, acceleration and movement are not frenetic — they slow you down. to watch his videos makes you want to fly, as the body is portrayed like a radical, anti- productive and crazy machine that works and whose aims are only personal freedom. His recording tool itself and digital editing are used in a functional way to this same end : by reversing, turning upside down, slowing down, splitting the screen and juxtaposing, the viewing experience is explored from that ‘proprioceptive' point of view. We feel our eye and brain muscles are being stretched, pulled, and made to do things that are ‘unnatural'. they are alive and as they act, they are means with no end.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
(Shaun Gladwell, In a Station of the Metro at Artspace Visual Arts Centre, sydney, 20 september — 20 october 2007)

Image :
Double Linework 2000
digital video color, sound, 2 mins, 4:3, stereo, courtesy the artist & Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and Sydney, Australia
Shaun Gladwell was born in 1972, Sydney, Australia. His work has been exhibited in major national and international exhibitions including : Yokohama 2005 Triennale of Contemporary Art ; First We Take Museums, KIASMA, Finland ; and Space Invaders, Museum Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland. He was represented in the 2006 Biennales in Busan (South Korea), Sao Paulo (Brazil), 2007 Venice Biennale, 2008 Sydney Biennale and Taipei Biennial.
Shaun Gladwell completed Associate Research at Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2001 and has since undertaken international residencies and commissions in Europe, North and South America, and the Asia Pacific Region. In 2009 Gladwell represented Australia at the Venice Biennale.
Selected solo exhibitions include Interior Linework/Interceptor Intersection, Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney, Australia, 2010 ; Seven Year Linework, Spacex, Exeter, UK, 2009 ; MADDESTMAXIMVS : Planet & Stars Sequence, Australian Pavilion, 53rd Venice Biennale, Italy, 2009 ; Shaun Gladwell, University Art Gallery, University of California, San Diego, USA, 2008 ; In a Station of the Metro, Artspace, Sydney, Australia, 2008 ; Recent Projects, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France, 2001 ; and Kickflipping Flâneur, Artspace, Sydney, Australia, 2000.
Gladwell's work has been exhibited in significant group exhibitions, including ‘Paradise Lost', Istanbul Museum of Art, Turkey, 2011 ; The ‘-scape' in Escape , Netwerk/ centrum voor hedendaagsekunst, Aalst,Belgium, 2011 ; “ ?” the 12th International Cairo Biennale, Egypt, 2011 ; Street and Studio. From Basquiat to Séripop, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria, 2010 ; Adaptation, Power Plant, Toronto, Canada, 2010 ; ABBARACADABRA, The First Mardin Biennial, Turkey, 2010 ; The Thrill of the Heights, OK Centre, Linz, Austria, 2009 ; RISING TIDE : Film and Video Works from the MCA Collection ,Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, USA, 2009 ; CODE SHARE : 5 continents, 10 biennales, 20 artists, Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius, Lithuania,2009 ; Revolutions Forms that Turn,16th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, 2008 ; Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taiwan, 2008 ; Space for Your Future, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan, 2007 ; Think with the senses, feel with the mind – art in the present tense, 52nd International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale, Italy,2007 ;How to Live Together ,27th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil,2006 ; Everywhere, Busan Biennale, South Korea, 2006 ; Art Circus (Jumping from the Ordinary), Yokohama 2005 Triennale of Contemporary Art, Japan, 2005 ; Space Invaders, Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland, 2005 ; and The Mind is a Horse, Bloomberg Space, London, UK, 2001.
In 2011 Gladwell will hold major solo museum exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut, USA, and at SCHUNCK, Heerlen, The Netherlands.
Shaun Gladwell is a Research Affiliate, Sydney College of the Arts, The University of Sydney