Front and back covers of the DVD.

DVD format


Title:Kurt Brereton - Five Films
Published by: Sensitive Plastic Productions
Duration: 25mins
Date: 2006
Cost: limited edition of 50 DVDs all signed by the artist=  A$ 55 + postage ($5) in Australia or $10 International.

 

ZEN-PDMK (Post Digital Meditation Kit)


No 1 ZEN-PDMK (Post Digital Meditation Kit) Digital animation, 4mins, 2005


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A1wR66wIic

“The ZEN-PDMK (Post-Digital Meditation Kit) comes with a portable subliminal chanting CD free to every novice. In a world driven by speed today’s forward thinking monk is able to rise above the city chaos. With the ZEN-PDMK you will effortlessly slip through the quantum planes of times with a calm and centred mind” [advertising copy only]

This work was inspired by seeing a Buddhist monk meditating in the middle of a busy Taipei city street. He was deep in meditation and was able to separate himself from the commotion of the traffic noise and rushing crowds around him. The monk’s presence draws the viewer in and concentrates the mind into a state of sympathetic meditation. The aim of this meditation is to forget or let go of yourself. You can then be transported into a pure state of being-ness -– joining with the white light noise – becoming one with the chaotic static of our postmodern world. [Kurt Brereton 2006]


Orpheus Enters The Mangroves


No2 Orpheus Enters The Mangroves, Digital animation, 4mins, 2006

Few people venture into the Orphic world of the mangroves. They are not something you pass through on the way to somewhere else. Mangroves demand a quantum leap of entrance, of being inside. And once you have left the familiar solid shore, you must give yourself up to the laws of mud, and mirrored waters. Ghostly white figures of mangrove trees, finger roots and eye socket holes stand prop-like on an estuarine stage. Here imagination follows matter. All life is interconnected, hyper-adaptive and flexible. Temporal and spatial references must be renegotiated. Stillness and patience force an attentive silence and a breathing that is long, slow and deep – in tune with the pulse of the river. The reward is a gradual introduction to the mangroves as a sympathetic organism – a body with much more going on beneath the surface expanses of dumb mud, reflective pools and unruly trees.

 

Edgewood Estate


No3 Edgewood Estate, Digital animation, 3mins, 2006


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArZCYrciCtw

This is a performance drawing animation that includes the artist as a player. You witness the development of the artwork – every step becomes a frame. This work is about the art-making process, about the ecological time and the built environment. On a political level, the work shows the loss of the rainforest as the housing projects take over. As a result of global warming and climate change a bushfire is seen rushing through the forest destroying the housing estate in its path. What is left is a burnt out wasteland with only the trace of the estate left behind.

The animation is projected onto the gallery next to the large drawing “frame” showing the last arrested end stage. The viewer can witness the history of this estate in an endless loop.


performance drawing - charcoal, acrylic and linocut stamps on paper (152cm x 112cm) - 1500 frames

 

Mt Keira (Eternal Monument for a Short Time)


No4 Mt Keira (Eternal Monument for a Short Time), Digital animation, 2mins, 2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ecHEWtlxhw

Mt Keira is the Mt Fuji of my local landscape. Both mountains are extinct volcanos and both can be seen from the coast. And both are symbolic of nature’s monumental (sublime) beauty and the insignificance of human mortality in the face of such an eternal presence. Our experience of such a monument is made up of a series of views, frame grabs and glimpses.

We experience a rainstorm and fog sweeping across the face of the mountain. Occasionally every so often for or a split second we catch an afterimage of the artist at work. As viewers, we can only witness the history of this eternal monument as a series of endless loops of short “rushes”
.
The animation is projected onto the gallery next to the large drawing “frame” showing the last arrested arbitrary end stage.

performance drawing - charcoal and eraser on paper (152cm x 112cm) - 900 frames

 

The Fall


No5 The Fall, digital animation, 2mins, 2006

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GsHaXEu1Ds

The Fall of Man, or simply The Fall, is a Christian Biblical myth that refers to humanity's fall from a state of innocent bliss to a state of sinful understanding. The cause of this fall was disobedience to God and the result of it was that humankind could no longer remain in God's beautiful Garden of Eden, or walk in the sight of God.

Adam and Eve's disobedience and subsequent "expulsion" has continuing consequences for us all being their descendants, who from that time forward must strive and suffer and die.

The fall from the garden is also a relevant ecological metaphor for the growing global environmental crisis. Like Adam and Eve, we are in danger of being driven out into a new ecological desert, a new sterility for our collective postindustrial sins.
The Fall can also be seen as an aesthetic casting out from the innocence of Modernism and its grand narratives of heroic progress. The artwork on the walls is constantly changing – being cast out of the “garden” studio/gallery. Nothing is permanent; noting exists beyond the moment of the recording eyes of the camera. In the beginning was the blank wall canvas and in the end there remains only a blank wall and empty space.

The Garden

3D animation of the Garden of Eden reduced to a series of 2 dimensional screen memory images of nature inside a virtual room projection

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0MxFXtSGEA

 

Artist Statement


My animations combine both digital and traditional analogue media (drawing, collage, painting). In that sense all my work is multimedia in nature. The unique differences between digital and analogue media offer a way of constructing works that convey a wide range of emotional responses from the viewer.
There is a tension between the hot media ink or charcoal line produced by the human biotech mind -hand “machine” and the cool pixelated lined produced by a mathematical vector-based program. Both lines trace or map out an idea yet each brings a world of different connotations with it. By combining paper with screen, lead pencil with LED and paint with phosphor pixel, I can perform a semiotic dance of signs for the viewer. I do not want to lose the trace or evidence of my body from my creative works. I enjoy tracing or reading the thousands of organic choices made in every painting, sculpture or drawing made by hand.

My works often grow out of each other across time. In many ways the present is made up of fragments of the past and the future both projected as tiny animated flashes in conscious moment. Rather like dreams or TV advertising spots, my animations are highly condensed abstract audio-visual conceptual messages. These images are intended to be “grabbed”, like take-away food, as you pass by then are slowly absorbed into the subconscious over time. It is hoped that bits of these messages will then resurface into your conscious mind as images, sensations, ideas or associations to play a role how you think and feel.

In many ways my animations are extensions of my 2D work, my writing and performance works. This rhizomatic approach that grows like a ginger root in a non-linear fashion allows me to develop ideas in a more organic way that mirrors how my daily life is experienced. Images, signs, motifs, memories all have a habit of returning like old friends to strike up new relationships with your current ideas.

My local social, cultural and ecological environments serve as an ongoing focus for my conceptual ideas. I tend to work local and think global as a strategy. The politics of both global and local life impact on aesthetics in practical as well as ideological ways. It is impossible for me to divorce my aesthetic concerns from my everyday political being. In this way my works deal with political issues as much as art issues.

It is always my aim and objective to try to move the viewer both immediately in an aesthetic reaction and then more indirectly in a conceptual and political investigation and reflection. The pleasure gained by experiencing a work lies in a marriage between the apparent simplicity of the physical signs and the complexity of their conceptual meanings. This is in many ways the same philosophical approach as the Zen calligraphy masters have employed for ages.

Another recurring theme in my work is the role time plays in shaping reality. Many of my animations are concerned with performance in some way. My early career as an actor and performance artist has carried over into my paintings and animation works. The role of the body is crucial to every art production – even my body an active and obvious player in my works. In this way it becomes clear that the sacrifice of time and energy has been committed in a positive manner.

Every artwork is a map of beingness. Through the work can be traced the decisions made along the ways. The reading of the artworks is therefore collaboration between artist (myself) and the viewer (yourself). Where the artwork takes you is dependant on the choices you make along the journey of making sense of the reality-fictions before you.