John Conomos

Figuring Landscapes

editor — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:28:31 +0000

Figuring Landscapes, moving image work from the UK and Australia, multiple venues (2008-2009)

Tate Modern, London
Friday 6 February – Sunday 8 February 2009

Figuring Landscapes is a collection of moving image works that has grown from the Political and cultural history that links Australia and the UK. The 58 featured artists address questions of nation and identity as well as ecological survival, post-industrialism, gender, the touristic gaze, and uniquely in Australia the social, political and cultural status of Indigenous people in a post-colonial society.

Rethinking the Contemporary Art School: the Artist, the PhD, and the Academy

editor — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:57:06 +0000

Brad Buckley, John Conomos (editors)

Su Baker, Bruce Barber, Mikkel Bogh, Juli Carson, Edward Colless, Jay Coogan, Luc Courchesne, Sara Diamond, Lauren Ewing, Gary Pearson, Bill Seaman, Jeremy Welsh, Bruce Yonemoto.

Rethinking the Contemporary Art School examines the reasons for the art school and its continued existence, its role in society and what should be taught and learnt in the context of what is now a globalised art world. The book also considers different art school models from innovative graduate programs, to independent stand-alone schools such as Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCADU) and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art to art schools, which are departments or schools of major research universities and the problems they face operating in what James Elkins describes as ‘marginalised in university life.’

The Bells of Toledo available now on the ABC website

editor — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:00:15 +0000

The full show can be heard on the ABC website here.

Lake George (after Mark Rothko)

editor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:06:50 +0000

An homage to Mark Rothko, and also in the long take cinema tradition (specifically Jean-Marie Straub and the late Daniele Huillet’s Too Early, Too Late [1982]), a landscape video about the ‘disappearing’ lake located outside Canberra, Australia. This work is in two versions; Installation and Essay (forthcoming).

Aura

editor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:01:46 +0000

A video essay on the new ‘technological’ sublime in every day life.

Cyborg Ned

editor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:59:01 +0000

An homage to Nam June Paik TV Buddha series, this video sculpture represents Ned Kelly as Australia’s first ‘cyborg’ outlaw.

Autumn Song

editor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:52:35 +0000

Autobiographical performance about the artist’s childhood in a milk bar at Tempe and his ancestral forbearers from the Greek Island of Kythera.

Cinema of Solitude

editor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:54:46 +0000

French film-maker, Robert Bresson died in December, 1999 at the age of 92. Although he left behind only twenty hours of screen time, Bresson created one of the most distinctive bodies of work in world cinema. An enigmatic, solitary presence who became a figure of awe and unquestioning reverence, Bresson influenced diverse cinema-world figures like Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Paul Schrader, Eric Rohmer and Aki Kaurismaki.

Bresson believed in ‘cinematography’, a relentlessly precise expression of human life stripped of traditional cinema’s reliance on theatre, psychology, background music or realism as detailed in his only book, the aphoristic Notes on the Cinematographer (1975).

In this feature, writer and film-maker John Conomos essays Robert Bresson’s ‘magisterial cinema’ which had a profound impact on him as a young film-goer. Composer Robert Lloyd’s score evokes the subtle rhythms and use of space and silence in Bresson’s films.

Cinema of Solitude (as well as dismantling some of the myths surrounding Bresson) is a lyrical, personal tribute to an uncompromising and unique artist who embarked ‘on a voyage of discovery to an unknown planet’.

Writer: John Conomos
Original music: Robert Lloyd
Readings by Chris Haywood, Susan Lyons and Vanessa Downing.
Sound engineer: Andrei Shabunov
Producer: Brent Clough

This radiophonic essay/performance work was commissioned by the Features and Documentaries Unit of ABC Radio National, and first broadcast on Radio Eye, ABC Radio National.

This work is made available for the purposes of critical review, private audition and educational use only, and may not to be sold, broadcast or made available for MP3 download without permission from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Smoke in the Woods

editor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 01:48:14 +0000

Smoke in the Woods is an autobiographical meditation on exile, memory and time.

This lyrical sound collage deals with the author’s ‘milk-bar childhood’ memories of 50s Sydney and of the Greek island of Kythera – whose inhabitants have travelled to Australia since the nineteenth century. It also evokes the island’s rich presence in art, literature and music and recalls a significant meeting between the author and his uncle, who never left Kythera but who has held a strong spell over him since his childhood.

Writer: John Conomos
Performers: Anna Kypreos, Arky Michael, Doris Younan
Sound engineer: Steven Tilley
Producer: Matthew Leonard

This radiophonic essay/performance work was commissioned by the Features and Documentaries Unit of ABC Radio National, and first broadcast on Radio Eye, ABC Radio National.

The Bells of Toledo

editor — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 01:32:40 +0000

The Bells of Toledo is a passionate cinephile’s idiosyncratic homage to the great Spanish film maker Luis Buñuel. Best known perhaps for his scathing, surrealistic satires of middle class mores in films such as ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ and The Exterminating Angel, Buñuel was a savage critic of the Catholic Church and the military dictatorship in Spain, and his subjects ranged from urban poverty to sexual fantasy. His career spanned fifty years years, and began with a shocking ‘bang’ – the avant garde short film he made with Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou (1929), infamous for its image of a woman’s eye being sliced open with a razor blade and well known to every student of film.

In The Bells Toledo, Australian artist and film academic John Conomos sends a fan’s love letter to a film maker who has kept him spellbound in the front stalls for more than forty years.

Writer: John Conomos
Performers: Virginia Baxter, Ruben Fernandez; William Zappa
Sound engineer/technical producer: Russell Stapleton
Producer: Tony MacGregor

The Bells of Toledo was commissioned by the Features and Documentaries Unit of ABC Radio National, and will be broadcast on Radio Eye, ABC Radio National. Saturday 4th October 2008. Listen to the programme here.