#signalscreencommissions

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David Mahler is an artist best known for his vibrant, abstract art films, animations and paintings exploring human consciousness, connection and spirituality in a digital age. A University of Melbourne VCA BFA Film and Television graduate, his short films have screened at international film festivals from Canada to Russia, and he has most recently been commissioned by the City of Melbourne to partake in the 2017 Signal Screen Arts Commission. Inspired first and foremost by nature - from the micro of plankton and atoms to the macro of the solar system - Mahler’s art aims to lull viewers into a state of trance through pattern and colour.

https://vimeo.com/davidcmahler

http://davidmahlercomics.tumblr.com/

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‘Cosmic Echo’ by David Mahler depicts the flow of energies and by extension the element of consciousness through space, celestial bodies and forms of life. Presented as an infinite loop moving between the micro - the human eye - and the macro - a theoretical vast well of consciousness at the centre of the universe - this piece aims to present the cyclical nature of reality. The first half of the film depicts abstracted representations of creation, before flipping, reversing and playing out the inevitable destruction.

David animated this piece using a mixture of mediums, including spray paint, digital animation, traditional animation and film.

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Taking up drawing at age 8 in an attempt to impress the brooding & creative Brenton-from-the-year-above, Signal Screens mentor Freya Pitt hasn’t stopped since. She has exhibited in galleries, completed permanent and ephemeral commissions in public space around Australia and internationally.

Since completing her Masters of Art in Public Space at RMIT(2014) she has participated in the Melbourne Festival Art Trams Project, White Night Melbourne, Gertrude St Projection Festival, the Summer Nights program at FringeWorld and Skypetrait; transcontinental faces, a research project between Melbourne and Reutlingen University.

Using new media and projection to interrupt the experience of space and self Pitt’s practice investigates ways to encourage reflexive engagement. The combination of nihilism and desire when faced with self and social reflection is a never-ending fascination for humanity. Pitt works to engage people in a moment of embodiment with this paradox in an attempt to reach for a cosmopolitan imaginary. Her work exists in a strange nexus between social theory, folklore, lumens and silly costumes. Freya and Brenton never worked out, but she does have more projectors than she ever dreamed of as a kid and few regrets.

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SIGNAL SCREENS OPENS 24th AUGUST 2017

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Mentor Xanthe Dobbie is a Melbourne-based new media artist and curator. Her practice aims to capture the experience of post-internet contemporaneity as reflected through feminism, art history, iconography and queer culture. Xanthe has exhibited across Australia in various solo and group shows, and internationally in the UK, Germany, Austria, and Thailand. Highlights include QueerTech.io (Midsumma VIC, Mardi Gras NSW, MELT Festival QLD, 2017), One Million Views (Next Wave Festival, 2016), The John Fries Award (Finalist, UNSW, 2016), and The Macquarie Digital Portraiture Award (Finalist, National Portrait Gallery, ACT, 2014). 

21st Century Greatest Hits Screensaver Pack: 2004, Tigerlily (2017).

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The title of Veronica D. Charmont's work Dianthus Plumarius loosely translates to wild pink, garden pink or simply common pink and is therefore the origins for the name of the colour we know so well. Pink’s bold and bright presence within everyday items, clothing or transport is often hard to ignore. However once represented through the architectural structures of the city, the colour suddenly becomes mysteriously hidden.  

This may be that the quality of something as ‘serious’ as architecture paired with a stereotypically feminine colour; a colour not often seen outside of its gendered limitations, is uncommon and therefore confusing or even confronting. It seems out of place, or even surreal in comparison to the looming grey structures of the city. Pink itself often bears allusions to the rare, the dreamlike or even the artificial and therefore its living may rely on the findings of the science of colour itself. Pink does not sit on the electromagnetic spectrum, and therefore cannot possibly exist. Then what exactly is it that are we seeing?

These theories are consequently explored through the layers of filming which not unlike our eyes attempt to capture its colourful and seemingly truthful existence. Pink’s matching endurance through materiality is additionally examined in paint and coloured paper.

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Here we bend that certain slant of light (2018) by Raphael Buckley is a film like a moving painting, a non-narrative mosaic of still-lifes articulated in time. Using stop-motion techniques to transform inanimate objects into life-like beings, Raph present an unpredictable texture of absurd and quirky imagery.

There is a continuity of objects silhouetting and foreshadowing each other in order to create a poetic geometry. The film aims to manipulate familiarity and rearrange its identity, using different rhythms, from climatic fast cuts flashing by, to more slowly paced out operatic compositions of staged still life harmonies. Raph uses his own skin as a canvas on which to create a futuristic dream of animated tattoos, where the use of the human frame for surface detail expresses something more emotional.

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Fulguration by Jamie Vitacca explores the manipulation of light within nature, technology, and human coercion.

Light is congruous in our lives and the manipulation of this element aids in the everyday whilst also being enticing and encapsulating.

The camera which filmed the footage registers light to create an image, whilst the projector that displays the work projects light to reinforce this imagery. The subject matter of ‘light’ reiterates the materiality of this equipment and their purpose of capturing and projecting light.

In a sense the piece is the study of Optics from an expressive and emotive perspective rather than that of science.

Just as moths movements are motivated towards light, Jamie hopes his piece will have the same effect with the passersby of SIGNAL; encapsulating and subverting their focus of the everyday for a short period of time.

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X is a mixed media drawing project by Eleanor Rieniets which aims to address the traditional function and purpose of the Signal building, honouring the legacy of collection and distribution of data and information within the surrounding area. X is a project which collects and distributes information derived from movement patterns of people through an observational drawing process focusing specifically on the surrounding site of the signal building. 

This project is a speculation into public space and comprises of three key phases. Initially, an observational and data collection phase, secondly the curation and reinterpretation of data into a moving image. And finally, the distribution of data which is displayed for public viewing.

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Raph is currently in Year 10 at St Michael’s Grammar and has been making films and stop-motion works for the last few years. A continuing theme of his work is the development of relationships between organic and inorganic forms, accentuating a structure underpinning disorientated and unpredictable episodes. 

He participated in the 2018 VCA Visual Art Winter School course and has done work experience with senior Indigenous artist Judy Watson. He will attend VCASS for Year 11 in 2019.

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Jamie is currently undertaking a double degree of Fine Arts and Arts (majoring in Film and Screen Studies) at Monash University.

In his practice he is interested in the emotive nature of colour, the creation of pathos, and the language of film. He aims to convey these interests through varying mediums, predominately working with video, and lens based pieces.

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Veronica D. Charmont is a Melbourne based artist who is currently a second year student in Visual Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts. Her work predominantly focuses on the experience and illusion of the cinematic image, while blending elements of surrealism, colour and poetry.

She has previously exhibited work at SIGNAL through a collaboration with Stanislava Pinchuk, as well as Incinerator Gallery’s annual Fireworks exhibition. Her most recent exhibited video work was screened at South Space festival back in February 2018.

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Eleanor Rieniets practice embraces a cross disciplinary approach to drawing and how the medium can be expanded upon through an immersive multilayered experience. Through combining various techniques of mark making, data collection, collage and videography in the production of drawing outcomes she begins speculations on how people are situated within the built environment.

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Gabrielle Skye Nehrybecki is a Melbourne-based artist. She is completing her final semester of a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Sculpture and Spatial Practice at Victorian College of the Arts. She was this year’s recipient of the Majlis Travelling Scholarship.

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Signal Screens 2017

Five projects were selected for the 2017 Signal Screens Commissions. Each young artist/collaboration is paired with an established artist as a mentor to create a new public artwork presented on the Signal screens. 

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While making Eruption Sense, Tori Ball and Jai Leeworthy were thinking about the unspoken rules of public space - shared (or imagined) ideas of what is and is not allowed. As artists interested in gender, they often think about how certain ways of presenting themselves to the world change how ‘visible’ they are. 

‘When you’re presenting in a way that breaks the unspoken rules, people will notice you and some people will try to make you afraid. This fear then changes what you perceive.’

For this project, they tried to make costumes that were as visible as possible, and experiment with behaviours and objects that might not be ‘allowed’ in order to see how that changes our experience. In setting four perspectives of the same event against each other, Eruption Sense invites you to imagine a more compassionate encounter with the different people you see on the street.

Tori Ball and Jai Leeworthy have collaborated on several projects spanning theatre, film and spoken word poetry. Their shared practice engages discussions around ecology, gender and the body. They both studied a Bachelor of Arts (Screen & Cultural Studies) at the University of Melbourne, but not at the same time.