Snap Happy

Seven leading female artists explored the notion of narrative, the great unfolder of fact and fiction, in this exhibition presented by ACCA Curator Rebecca Coates. Internationally renowned, others were Tacita Dean (UK); Dorothy Cross (Ireland); Janice Kerbel (Canada) and Rosemarie Trockel (Germany) and fellow Australians Kate Daw and Catherine Bell. They explored the world of narrative through a variety of media including film, photogravure etching, sculpture, painting and installation. The exhibition title derived from a renowned quote from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.' Kosloff's research is around the reinterpretation of everyday scenes and the general milieu of life to challenge the continuum of time and hazes perceptions of time with place and persona. 'Snap happy' is a black and white Super 8 film in which Kosloff documents a group of tourists as they photograph and experience their surroundings. Her use of outmoded technology to document this contemporary scene plays with our impressions of the past and our assumptions about the present. The Super 8 camera acts as a filter, reinterpreting everyday scenes and disengaging them from a contemporary sense of time and space. This two-minute video work highlights the moving image as simulacra, by drawing attention to the contingency of representational practices in art and daily life. 'Truth explores a particular sensibility,' says ACCA Curator Rebecca Coates. 'There's a questioning, a suggestiveness, a lingering refrain, as narrative is written, rewritten and allowed to remain ambiguous.' Kosloff's Super 8 films explore the subjective process of truth in relation to time, space and memory. These films capture people interacting with the built world, undertaking work and leisure activities. A catalogue of the exhibition was written by Coates and Louise Adler. (ISBN 0947220895).