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 | installation dimensions: variable

​

VIEW: https://vimeo.com/54414154

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

​

AKIMBO is an installation comprised of a large-scale photograph, and a single-channel video. 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 (c. 1972) 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 her 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 Italian immigrant familial narrative. 

​

SHOWN:

ENJOY Public Art Gallery (Wellington)

​

AKIMBO is part of THE RETURN project

​

​

INSTALLATION VIEW: ENJOY Public Art Gallery (Wellington)