New Balance

Shaun Gladwell

12 February - 21 March 2004
West End Gallery

From balletic, virtuosic skateboarding to painting from literary and art historical sources, Shaun Gladwell's art practice engages in 'creative distortion resulting from the transmission of images and ideas between different cultural zones and historical periods'. His work draws from personal experience through to wider discourses on power, history, contemporary culture and technology. In this solo exhibition, Gladwell extends his recent work with extreme sports in the gravity-defying Tangara, and particularly the urban practice of skateboarding in three major video works; Linework, Kickflipper: fragments edit, and Storm Sequence. The video works place emphasis on the city (Sydney) as a stage for choreographed performances and intervention, where strict rules increasingly determine the use of public space / transport / art / architecture. As a painter, Gladwell carries through themes of ownership and propriety in his 'Anonymous Figures' series; elongated, faceless copies of Gainsborourgh portraits of 18th century aristocracy. The improbable sculptures that sit between his painting and video works are conjoined technological objects, together distorting information to remix a new kind of sound (A Clear Day), or suggesting other ways for time/space transcendence (Enterprise).