Force Majeure
2016
Single channel video, 14 minutes 50 seconds, 2016
Force Majeure is moving image work critiquing the European romantic landscape tradition, which questions art making practice in general. Over the a period of six months in 2016, Hirst attempted again and again to film herself painting a seascape whilst in the midst of terrible weather, questioning the buffer zone required between an event and its representation, and the hubris of the romantic painting tradition which attempts to capture vast phenomena within a small rectangular frame. The attempts took place on the Island of Rügen, in northern Germany, where Caspar David Friedrich would visit to paint in the early 1800s. The resulting film shows two of these attempts, and was shown accompanied by a series of watercolour ‘paintings’ produced through this process, in various states of erasure.
Commissioned by the Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Melbourne for NEW16.
Film still credits Gabriella Hirst. Install photos credit Andrew Curtis.
2016
Single channel video, 14 minutes 50 seconds, 2016
Force Majeure is moving image work critiquing the European romantic landscape tradition, which questions art making practice in general. Over the a period of six months in 2016, Hirst attempted again and again to film herself painting a seascape whilst in the midst of terrible weather, questioning the buffer zone required between an event and its representation, and the hubris of the romantic painting tradition which attempts to capture vast phenomena within a small rectangular frame. The attempts took place on the Island of Rügen, in northern Germany, where Caspar David Friedrich would visit to paint in the early 1800s. The resulting film shows two of these attempts, and was shown accompanied by a series of watercolour ‘paintings’ produced through this process, in various states of erasure.
Commissioned by the Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Melbourne for NEW16.
Film still credits Gabriella Hirst. Install photos credit Andrew Curtis.
