Contemporary Australia: Women

101 Sometimes intimate and often declaratory, Melbourne‑based video, performance and installation artist Anastasia Klose’s art work is largely a product of curiosity. While many video artists today employ a range of other mediums, such as film, computer art, animation and a variety of digital applications, Klose looks to the fundamentals — found objects, body and performance, handwritten messages on recycled materials and editing her footage using iMovie. Making ‘cheap’ art using low‑tech media presents an added challenge, which she embraces. Early in her career Klose attracted media attention with In the toilets with Ben 2005, in which she has sex with a friend on the floor of the disabled toilets at the Victorian College of the Arts. 1 Described by the artist as a ‘symbolic and significant’ gesture, she began to feel that the work had to be more than a film about sex and decided to push the boundaries further by making Mum and I watch ‘In the toilets with Ben’ later in the same year. 2 In the sequel, Klose’s mother — sculptor and installation artist Elizabeth Presa — watches the earlier video with her daughter and while the scene is particularly awkward, as viewers, we begin the empathetic process and cannot help but become captivated by this alarming situation. As voyeurs of Klose’s autobiographical works we sit back and take note of unsuspecting participants in the videos, study their reactions and feel compelled to watch her most vulnerable moments, as painful as they may be. These moments — inspired by agonizing, humorous and consequential moments in her life — are perceptible in Film for my nanna 2006, in which Klose walks the streets of inner-city Melbourne in a wedding dress purchased from an opportunity shop with a cardboard sign declaring, ‘Nanna — I am still alone!’ In Je suis une artiste Aussie! 2007, she audaciously walks through Paris with a handwritten placard stating, ‘Bonjour Paris! Je suis une artiste aussi’, which playfully translates to both ‘Hello Paris! I am an artist too’ and ‘Hello Paris! I am an Aussie artist’. For her latest work Together 2011, Klose again joins forces with her mother — this time performing in a Melbourne shopping centre. Klose and Presa dance to Olivia Newton-John’s 1980 hit ‘Magic’, adorned in matching dresses purchased from a department store on the day and then returned for a full refund after the event. In front of a banner made out of an old bed sheet, stating ‘Mother and daughter experiencing the totality of existence!’, Klose and Presa perform contemporary jazz moves while being assured by the Australian queen of disco that ‘nothing can stand in [their] way’. Klose states: The work is about the fact that my mother and I are artists, and that we believe in ‘magic’, and that everyday things are magic to us, if we use our imagination. 3 The narrative, which is split into two parts, visually unfolds through a combination of photographic and video documentation interspersed with text. While the first chapter focuses on the spontaneous performance at the shopping centre, the second includes excerpts from the duo’s lessons in a dance studio, as well as snippets of mother and daughter rehearsing at home. The work draws from a number of sources, including Dancer in the Dark 2000 — the Danish musical film shot on a handheld camera and starring Icelandic singer‑songwriter Björk; and flash mobs — a 21st century phenomenon that has people assembling suddenly in a public space, performing momentarily and then dispersing. 4 Despite Klose’s work often displaying a sense of playfulness, it is hard not to draw comparisons between her practice and that of photographer and video artist Gillian Wearing. In 1997, Wearing — part of the ‘young British artist’ (yBa) movement — won the prestigious and frequently controversial Turner Prize with her video works Sixty minute silence 1996 and Sacha and mum 1996. Three years earlier Wearing had made Dancing in Peckham 1994, in which she enthusiastically danced without music in a South London shopping Anastasia Klose Australia b.1978 Together (production stills) 2011 Single-channel HD video projection, 16:9, colour, sound, 9:57 mins, ed. of 5 Anastasia Klose Anastasia Klose Mimetic magic and the everyday