AKIMBO [2011]

Mixed media installation: Single-channel digital video projection - 00:03:38 looped - colour - 4:3 | Inkjet print mounted on aluminium - 1000 mm x 1600 mm | Digital audio - 00:50:00 | Other materials: Audio-player, headphones | installation dimensions: variable

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VIEW: https://vimeo.com/54414154

INSTALLATION VIEW: https://vimeo.com/240456617

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AKIMBO is an installation comprised of a large-scale photograph, a single-channel video and a digital audio work. A short and otherwise fleeting moment from a family super-8 film of the artist as a young boy at his family home in Canada is isolated and extended using a slow-motion technique. In the original film, the artist spontaneously strikes an ‘effeminate’ gesture (i.e. akimbo) which visually echoes the physical stance taken in a photograph of his mother as a young girl standing in the family garden in Italy (c 1939). The gesture that the artist performs represents a moment of rupture and displacement of conventional male heteronormative behaviour within the traditional immigrant familial narrative. The audio component consists of a montage of the artists mother’s recorded messages left on the artist’s answering machine over a period of 10 years.

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SHOWN:

Enjoy Public Art Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand

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