Eternal situation

RESEARCH BACKGROUND Kosloff researched the response of AGNSW gallery visitors to the permanent collections of colonial 19th century Australian artworks and European old masters. Using a SLR camera that made her indistinguishable from other visitors, she became virtually invisible, a part of the museum frame. This allowed her to spontaneously capture their actions that can appear, poignant, amusing, pedestrian and at times absurd. Rather than a cruel gaze, Kosloff seeks to critique the systematic workings of cultural institutions and explore the paradoxical role of the art gallery/museum as a place of 'eternal' time, pragmatic limitations, intimate possibilities and inevitable distance. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE Visitors' studied and unconscious gestures and actions, from posing in front of sculptures to the act of simply walking away from works of art, are all captured through her lens. Similarities of form and shape, action and gaze are emphasised and brought into sharper relief through the editing and framing processes that create narrative emphasis and momentum. Kosloff set repeating footage of visitors looking, and not looking, at works of art to the musical refrains of Whitney Houston's 1990s classic love ballad 'I have nothing'. Beyond the experience of viewing art, visitor surveys revealed that art museums and galleries also have social functions as places to catch up with friends, to spend time as a family or even to conduct a first date. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE Eternal situation was commissioned for the 2012 Anne Landa Award for Video and New Media Art and was accompanied by an e-publication that included essays by the curators, Charlotte Day and Rebecca Coates. The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian online and Time Out magazine positively reviewed the work.