Moving Image: Public/Private
Bachelor of Creative Industries (BCI) is a degree that blends visual arts, fashion and graphic design
within an interdisciplinary setting. Students develop a range of diverse skills from practitioners
teaching on the degree, collaborating and working alongside industry. The BCI prepares students for
all the demands of the world’s creative practice.
Visual Arts is one of the major’s within the BCI, which explores a range of technologies from painting,
drawing, printmaking, 3D construction, Installation and Moving Image. Students work towards the
understanding of being a practicing artist learning not only creative skills but also exhibition methods
and techniques.
Year Two Visual Art students on the moving image course have created works that have been
developed from a brief, addressing ideas of what public and private could mean. Within the paper
students were challenged to consider a variety of situations around public and private possibilities.
Each student has tackled these concerns in a variety of ways utilising and exploring the technology of
Moving Image as a way to construct meaning. Viewers can expect to see large scale projections,
screens and sound.
Marilyn Cairns
The work examines the dualities we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our
interior and exterior selves, and comments on the consuming themes of ‘appearance as value’ in our
contemporary society. It is an exploration of the relationship between one’s public and private
persona, between perception, appearance and self-image.
The work directly responds to everyday ritual and its associated subtexts, exploring the theme of
value based on external image through performance/ film art. The performance within the film is
based on formal associations; defined actions that would go unnoticed in their original context. With
daily, recognizable elements, a situation in which the viewer is confronted with the conditioning of
cultural norms and their own readings and having to reconsider their subjective perception.
Presented as a muddle of imaginings of the identity which may or may not be represented, the artist
finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humour that echoes our own vulnerabilities.
In this way the work references a mass culture and media, where light-heartedness rules and where
rules are relentlessly undermined. Cairns is analysing the global cultural narrative of aesthetics based
value, the perception of character in the context of our contemporary visual culture of selfies and youtube videos; a culture of Voyeurism, Exposition, Narcissism and abstract Criticism.
Ashlei Luckman-Taupaki
The work considers the notions of internal and external being, the known self and the perceived that
is then performed to others. Luckman-Taupaki takes into account the visceral nature of the mind and
has created a work that employs tangible elements such as, visual and auditory means.
The work initially occurred between the artist and her son, the activity was looking at a science
experiment with the use of milk, soap and a range of food colourings. The experiment looks at the
reaction between the milk and the soap with the colour being caught in between the reaction.
“Properties of and changes in matter: Homogenized milk has gone through a process where the fat is
broken up into tiny pieces of fat called globules and spread throughout the milk. When the food
coloring was added to the milk, the fat globules were steady and undisturbed. Food coloring is less
dense than milk, so it floats on the surface. When dish soap touches the surface of the milk, things
begin to move. Dish detergent weakens the milk's bonds by attaching to its fat molecules. As the dish
soap diffuses into the solution it surrounds the fat globules in the milk”.
Here the artist found the properties in the experiment mirrored those in her own internal space, the
anxiety that she experiences. The work for the artist is a representation that signifies possibilities
around self and public performance/engagement, how one goes through a process of filtration of
dealing with anxiety on a daily basis. With something that is immaterial Luckman-Taupaki has given a
platform for others to experience such private moments.1
Scott Boardman
The work by Boardman was initially formulated to address concepts around the living space and the
effects on a space by the occupants, the cleanliness or non-cleanliness of the area seen. The artist
was trying to deal with personal responses to these spaces where he himself felt apprehensive about
certain levels of uncleanliness, pushing the personal boundary by venturing into spaces beyond his
own comfort. Over time the foundation of the work started to shift.
Throughout the filming experience Boardman began to develop a new understanding of the
exploration of the spaces he had captured. The process and subject matter of filming did not change
but a new direction of exploration occurred. Moving beyond a personal position of viewing, ideas
around surveillance and voyeurism transpired.
The spaces that the artist explored are places/spaces known to most, a living space, an area that is in
nearly all homes. A communal area, but the idea around ‘your house, your castle” reveals itself, the
view of the house then starts to encounter the idea of a home. The moving image itself is of the space
but from the viewing you know that there is a presence of life, recognisably comfortable yet distant.
1
L, Hurlbut & S, Mater (n.d) Matter and Materials Topic: Properties of and Changes in
matter .Retrieved from
http://www.nipissingu.ca/education/jeffs/4284winter/pdfs/magicmilk.pdf 05.06.2015