Media release
31 May 2006
For immediate release
Time Memorial
By Paul Mumme
Metro Arts Galleries
Exhibiting as part of the Metro Arts Artistic Program 2006
“The pure present is nothing but the ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future, in truth all sensation is already memory.”
- Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, 1911
Paul Mumme’s artistic career has taken a successful detour from painting to his current focus on video performance in his first major solo exhibition, Time Memorial, as part of the Metro Arts Artistic Program opening 14 June.
Paul’s artistic detour steered him in the right direction–his video performance works tied first prize for the Churchie Emerging Artist Prize in May this year and were awarded a first in the Minister’s Award for Excellence in Art, Education Queensland in 2001.
His video creations see him act like a small-time Orson Wells, as cameraman and subject, editor and director to produce works that use the same aesthetic principles he followed in his painting days.
“I am now creating ‘moving paintings’ without the cuts or transitions that usually characterise video work,” says Paul.
“My work plays with cyclical time in a positive/negative loop so that one moment is forever isolated and one action is repeatedly done/undone, or one state is preserved in real-time ad infinitum; an unblinking stare, a man waiting to fly or pulling on a rope, never relenting.”
Paul plays with this backward/forward editing technique to present work dealing with conceptual notions similar to that of history repeating. His ‘absurd’ works play with the viewer’s expectations of narrative, frustratingly denying the viewer any form of logical expectations or conclusion.
Time Memorial plays on time and history as cyclical, and presents a memorial for time where history should not be forgotten because we generally make the same mistakes, learn the same lessons and then forget them. Time Memorial plays with the notion of time immemorial or forgotten time, with the videos creating an eternal present of remembered time.
Paul’s interest in video was first ignited in late 2004 when he stumbled across an exhibition in Prague by little known artist Zoran Kovacevik who created mass scale pixelated prints out of low resolution images taken from a mobile phone camera.
Inspired by Kovacevik, Paul returned from his travels to commence photomedia and video study. In these formative years he happened across video artist Bruce Nauman’s early video works that show the artist performing various absurd tasks inspired by the work of playwright Samuel Beckett.
Paul was intrigued as to how Nauman’s performance constituted expression and the power of gesture or lack thereof and so began his focus on video performance.
Biography:
Paul has exhibited in a number of group exhibitions, in 2006 as a part of Fresh Cut at the Institute of Modern Art and Extract-Environments Real and Imagined at Metro Arts as part of a Queensland College of Art project. In 2005 Paul also exhibited in Memoryscape at the Brisbane Powerhouse, as well as Chimaera at Queensland College of Art.
His curatorial experience includes work as Project Coordinator for the Raw Footage program at the new moving image gallery in Brisbane, RAW Space Galleries this year, and with the Zootopia – Posters From the Urban Jungle collaborative exhibition at DELL Gallery, QCA, South Bank in 2005.
He is currently studying Honours in Fine Art at Queensland College of Art, South Bank.
Opening: Wednesday 14 June 6-8pm
Exhibition: 14 June - 1 July
Artist Talk: Wednesday 21 June 6pm
Metro Arts Galleries
Level 2, 109 Edward Street Brisbane
Monday - Friday 10am - 4:30pm
Saturday 10am - 1pm
Information: (07) 3002 7100 or www.metroarts.com.au
For interviews and images, please contact Frances Frangenheim, Manager Marketing and Communication, Metro Arts on (07) 3002 7100 or