On the 17th March Mikhael Subotzky’s show ‘WYE’, which features a 45 min film project by the same name, opened at the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation in Sydney, Australia. The show runs until the 21st May 2016.
Running concurrently, the 20th Biennale of Sydney continues until the 5th June 2016.
Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation presents an ambitious moving image project titled WYE by the South African artist and Magnum photographer Mikhael Subotzky. WYE comprises an intersecting three channel, immersive video presentation juxtaposing visions of 19th Century colonial history, an ambivalent and perhaps traumatic present day, with an imagined dystopic future. Collapsing these three narratives and three time zones into one mesmerising filmic experience, the audience is taken on a journey through South Africa, Australia and the heart of the British Empire – England.
Working with German cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein (Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre and Woyzeck), Subotzky shot WYE on location in South Africa, after two years of developing the artwork’s expansive, time-shifting narrative. A specially constructed, spatially engaging audio component complements the arresting visuals of WYE, immersing visitors in a site of temporal and geo-cultural collapse.
Read more at sherman-scaf.org.au, where you can find links to articles on the show.
Listen to a Radio National interview with Subotzky here
Check out Mikhael Subotzky’s print available only through ArtThrob!
Mikhael Subotzky, Johnny Fortune, 2004. Pigment inks on archival cotton rag paper, 56 x 78.4 cm
