Jenna Bliss, Tarren Johnson and Joel Cocks, Kim Hiorthøy, Nora Joung, Sophie Lee, and Richard Sides curated by Alexandra Symons-Sutcliffe and Nikhil Vettukattil.
Group Show presents work by seven artists whose varied practices include moving image and who– for this exhibition– have pushed at the definition of filmmaking to produce works that reckon with the conditions of film, though not necessarily as screen-based works. In film theory the mise-en-scène refers to all of the technical and stylistic arrangements that occur in front of the camera. Set design, lighting, composition, makeup and costume, acting, film stock and aspect ratio come together to form the plausible reality of the film-world. The mise-en-scène is less intellectually laboured over than other aspects of filmmaking and is a catch-all term for products of various crafts and professions. It is a necessary but empty holding space for artistic production, all present but without its own unique visual character. For this show at PODIUM, the group exhibition is framed as a static counterpart to the mise-en-scène. The collation of individual practices is a process of containment and framing, and viewed through online documentation singular works fall into their place in a scenography. In some cases the contributions to Group Show overlap visually and conceptually, but there is no central thematic core to the exhibition. Instead Group Show presents a set of practices that play with liveness, recording, framing and editing, and are themselves in process and motion. By making the structure of the group exhibition more visible Group Show announces itself as a condition so as to recede.