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Details
- Date
- 2015
- Media category
- Time-based art
- Materials used
- single channel digital video, colour, stereo sound music: The Dead C, LA Blues
- Edition
- 1/3
- Dimensions
- duration: 00:06:27 min, aspect ratio: 16:9
- Signature & date
Signed l.l. certificate of authenticity, black fibre-tipped pen "R van Hout". Not dated.
- Credit
- Purchased with funds provided by the Friends of New Zealand art 2016
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 234.2016
- Copyright
- © Ronnie van Hout
- Artist information
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Ronnie van Hout
Works in the collection
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About
Encompassing sculpture, installation, photography, video and more, New Zealand born and Melbourne based artist Ronnie van Hout’s work treads the line between humour and the macabre. Throughout his career van Hout has pursued warped renditions of the self-portrait genre, using his own body as both subject and material. In his work, the body often becomes fragmented, disfigured and alien – yet never relinquishes its comedic inflection. An uncanny proxy, van Hout’s body is both a site of and prop within absurdist narratives leaden with metaphoric entanglements and black humour.
In the short video piece 'Handwalk', a personified hand (the artist’s own) traverses a surreal and placeless landscape. The slightly undulating terrain, covered in what appears to be AstroTurf, is bathed in a light that shifts from red to purple. The scene unfolds as a micro-narrative of abjection and loneliness. The hand wanders aimlessly back and forth across the frame before it eventually encounters a friend. Curious, the two hands – a united pair – touch one another tentatively at first and then begin to dance. The protagonist suddenly interrupts the dance and wanders out of the frame. When the protagonist returns, the partner has disappeared.
Injecting the subtleties of human interaction into the fragmentary movements of a disembodied limb, van Hout displays an astute emotional dexterity. Powerful sensations of connection, abandonment and loss are palpable in the work and are amplified by the video’s ambient soundtrack that features music by New Zealand noise / drone band The Dead C.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 2 exhibitions
Station Gallery installation, Spring 1883, The Establishment Hotel, Sydney, 09 Sep 2015–12 Sep 2015
Shadow Catchers, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 22 Feb 2020–03 Jan 2021