Endless
Summer: Sunglasses and the spectacle
of vision
Gertrude
Contemporary Art Spaces Studio 12
18
May – 16 June 2007
200 Gertrude Street Fitzroy Australia
Endless
Summer catalogue (500KB)
Audio
of monologue (MP3
6MB)
Endless Summer chronicles one man’s obsession with
sunglasses. The exhibition consists of a sequence of portraits
of the man wearing his collection of sunglasses, in which
each of the 37 images is the same except he’s wearing
a different pair – one for every summer of his life.
The gallery space is constructed as a viewing experience with
two floor-to-ceiling tinted acrylic panels that can be looked
though like lenses, as an altered perceptual experience like
wearing a pair of spectacles. A voice-over accompanies the
installation, with the man recollecting his summers past as
he tries on each pair.
Adopted by twentieth-century fashion and celebrity culture,
sunglasses are revealing embodiments and representations of
human desire. The work sets up a comparison between sunglasses,
photography and vision, exploring the implications of lens
and framing, as well as the varying capacities of each to
contain time, and memorialise. Endless Summer looks
at the psychological and cultural aspects of sunglasses, as
objects and instruments of altered perception, from both sides
of the lens.
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