KT 083: The Friction of Distance (Jack Coventry, 2024)
Armani contemplates Cov's pièce de résistance
Armani Hollindale attended the Melbournian-turned-New York based contemporary artist Jack Coventry’s show The Friction of Distance at Quality, Abbotsford.
It screens for one final day today from 11 - 3pm - not to be missed!
Here is a little sample of the work.
Words by Armani Hollindale
Coventry sets up a movie mural – a news reel of ideas. The flag is raised. We double take the news. For the image - we give pure reaction. For the painting, we act. Methodically. We know here, standing in front of the work, we have access to more. Four corners to both generate and contain. We try to keep up with the brush strokes, but the clear image keeps hold of our gaze. Our gaze shifts only in search of a glance which may achieve new meaning.
You have one more day to feel it. How can I explain it to you… What feels like a statement of self-referentiality; Coventry exhibits the work a world apart. Another expat from Melbourne living in New York, another perfect show for Quality - Abbotsford’s home of experimental film, performance and design.
Conveniently, the room emulates the shape of a shipping container. The polite way to view the work is with one’s back against the longest walls. Film is projected on either end. One through a translucent mesh screen with space behind showing a morphing abstract painting mirroring the other – a flat, predominantly photographic series of moving images. Animals, people, moving vehicles, flashing lights, a flooded house, a city scape, dancing, snippets of cinema history, light to dark, nothing can be predicted – all to a sequence of mutating classical song.
Dilemma: where to look. Shallow would be to stare at the coloured moving image. Deep and meaningful, into the sheer plane of monochrome abstraction. Snatching at life. Fools looking back and forth. Now I’m looking at them. Judging. What do they care about? Watch it through three times and I still missed something. We’re being taken somewhere; we don’t know where. I had this great thought and I lost it.
One might ask if it denies our existence or depends on it. The transmission of a work depends on people. An invitation expects movement. We cater for anything lost in the journey, for that is the risk we take by inviting. If it is not the work that moves, it is we – travelling overseas to stand before it. Losing time. Old methods are more fragile, to the naked eye. As time goes on, the friction of distance wears thin, the signs of transmission are not so obvious. Things can be lost or stolen with little to no trace. Interference is almost guaranteed. After all, the product is really no less secure, but perhaps more deceiving.
The installation exposes the aesthetic demands of our time, revealing the eternal attempt of getting-away from detached images by which artists have been portraying physical reality.
We have come to use images as tools of contemplation. We set them up to have a world of their own, separate from the world they depict. In their own completeness, they can freely develop their own style. When dealing with such a visual tension, I turn to Rudolf Arnheim for reason, he believes “These virtues are continually outweighed by the anxiety which the very detachment arouses… the mind cannot afford it because our own hold on reality has loosened too much. The image finds its place in proving it is more than such, and the most radical way of accomplishing this is to abandon the portrayal of the things of nature altogether. When the abstractionists had abandoned the portrayal of natural objects, their paintings were still representing coloured shapes dwelling in a pictorial space, that is, they were still pretending the presence of something that was not there. The curious paradox in the nature of any image is, of course, that the more faithful it becomes, the more it loses the highest function of imagery, namely, that of synthesising and interpreting what it presents. Thereby it loses interest.” Coventry maintains interest in the use of a three dimensionality which abolishes any fixed perspective, thus replacing the image with total illusion. Our eye learns to classify signs, but Coventry increases our inability to see. We are met with something closer to performance, uniting the subject and spectators in a common adventure.
The artist uses what he has on hand, orchestrates the image material in response to his own conundrum, and presents to us anything but closure. Merely, dreams for us to identify with, signs of fear and drama. In order for the elimination of fear, we must aim for it. The object of fear must be objectified; we learnt this in discovery of the earliest paintings. The medium of video art itself is uniquely qualified to express the chaos and confusion of our time, even if only by allowing the artist to express it. It concerns the appreciation of individual minds, whereby the process of life as an experiment on earth has never been clearer.
This is perhaps one of many filmic variations of an idea. Between thousands of separate spasms of creativity, maybe only one is caught. The distance between an idea and its realisation is ever so fragile. We find ourselves standing in the space between.
In a virtual depiction of the title, Coventry invites us to consider his own words which accompany - “All movement incurs a debt…let me say goodbye again, so that I may operatically announce another distance between you and me.”
WEEKLY FILM LISTINGS
26 Sept - 2 Oct
New Releases
Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola, 2024
Screening Daily
Eno
Gary Hustwit, 2024
Screening Thur, Fri and Sat
Matinees
The Monk and the Gun
Pawo Choyning Dorji, 2023
Screening Fri - Sun
Focus on Thai Horror
Shutter (ชัตเตอร์ กดติดวิญญาณ)
Banjong Pisanthanakun & Parkpoom Wongpoom, 2004
Screening Sun
Nang Nak (นางนาก)
Nonzee Nimibutr, 1999
Screening Monday
No screening this week
ASTOR CINEMA
BBBC CINEMA (GALLERYGALLERY BRUNSWICK)
Closed until 2025
No screening this week
CHINATOWN CINEMA
Go for Broke
Marc Ma, 2024
Screening Daily
Enjoy Yourself (Zhu Ni Xing Fu)
Bo Kang, 2024
Screening Daily
CINÉ-CLUB (Carlton)
Coming back in some variety soon
No screening this week
Events
Check sites for rep titles
Release
Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe
Maurice Pialat, 2023
Screening at most arthouse screens
Kid Snow
Paul Goldman, 2024
Screening at most arthouse cinemas
Last Summer
Catherine Breillet, 2023
Screening Daily
Kneecap
Rich Peppiatt, 2023
Screening Daily
I Saw the TV Glow
Jane Schoenbrun, 2023
Screening Thurs
Alien: Romulus
Fede Álvarez, 2024
Screening Daily
Strange Darling
Jacqueline Lentzou, 2024
Screening Daily
Longlegs
Graham Verchere, 2024
Screening Daily
How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies
Liu Jia, 2024
Screening Daily
Kinds of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos, 2024
Screening Daily
La Chimera
Alice Rohrwacher, 2023
Screening Daily
Check site for other full list
DOGMILK DEGUSTATIONS: @ Miscellania
Coming back kinda soon
EXPERIMENTAL FILM CLUB
Listings coming soon
Done for now, will return soon
GAY24 (Bar Flippy’s)
No screening this week
HITLIST (9 Gertrude St, Fitzroy)
Shut for now
LIDO / CLASSIC / CAMEO
Events
Check sites for rep titles
General Release
Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola, 2024
Screening Daily
My Old Ass
Megan Park, 2024
Screening Daily
Last Summer
Catherine Breillet, 2023
Screening Daily
Kneecap
Rich Peppiatt, 2023
Screening Daily
I Saw the TV Glow
Jane Schoenbrun, 2023
Screening Thurs
Alien: Romulus
Fede Álvarez, 2024
Screening Daily
Strange Darling
Jacqueline Lentzou, 2024
Screening Daily
Longlegs
Oz Perkins, 2024
Screening Daily
Kinds of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos, 2024
Screening Daily
Maxxxine
Ti West, 2024
Screening Daily
The Bikeriders
Jeff Nichols, 2024
Screening Daily
OVA CLUB
No screening this week
THE MELBOURNE CINÉMATHÈQUE (ACMI)
I Served the King of England
Jiří Menzel, 2006
Screening Wednesday 2 Oct 7:00pm
+
Jiří Menzel – To Make a Comedy Is No Fun
Robert Kolinsky, 2016
Screening Wednesday 2 Oct 9:05pm
TOP OF THE HEAP (Tramway Hotel)
No screening this week
No screening this week
MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: SCREENING IDEAS
No screening this week
PALACE BALWYN / BRIGHTON / COMO / KINO / PENTRIDGE / MOONEE PONDS / WESTGARTH
General Release
A Difficult Year
Olivier Nakache & Éric Toledano
Screening at most arthouse screens
Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola, 2024
Screening at most arthouse screens
My Old Ass
Megan Park, 2024
Screening at most arthouse screens
Bonnard, Pierre and Marthe
Maurice Pialat, 2023
Screening at most arthouse screens
Kid Snow
Paul Goldman, 2024
Screening at most arthouse cinemas
Kneecap
Rich Peppiatt, 2023
Screening Daily
I Saw the TV Glow
Jane Schoenbrun, 2023
Screening Thurs
Alien: Romulus
Fede Álvarez, 2024
Screening Daily
Longlegs
Oz Perkins, 2024
Screening Daily
Kinds of Kindness
Yorgos Lanthimos, 2024
Screening Daily
The Bikeriders
Jeff Nichols, 2024
Screening Daily
Longlegs
Oz Perkins, 2024
Screening Daily
No screening this week
No listings this week / click link above to see what’s on (their site too hard to list)
My Old Ass
Megan Park, 2024
Screening almost daily
The Wildest Robot
Chris Sanders, 2024
Screening Fri, Sat and Sun
The Substance
Coralie Fargeat, 2024
Screening Fri - Wed
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Tim Burton, 2024
Screening Saturday
UNKNOWN PLEASURES @ Thornbury Picture House
No screening this week