Between the Details: Video Art from the ACMI Collection

Image: Deborah Kelly, The Gods of Tiny Things, 2019 (video still). Photo: Supplied. 

ACMI’s collection has a rich, 75-year history from its inception as the State Film Centre in 1946. Since its incarnation as ACMI in the early 2000s, the collection has expanded to include artworks and experimental film.

ACMI now holds a significant archive of complex, time-based media works and videogames, as well as an ever-expanding repository of digitised content and born-digital material. 

This exhibition celebrates ACMI’s vibrant collecting and commissioning program, showcasing six moving image artworks by Australian artists. Working in video offers artists the opportunity to use editing as a primary technique; mixing and matching elements from other films, or their own work, to tell new stories. 

By remixing or rearranging footage, these six artists build different rhythms and moods, creating hilarious juxtapositions or shedding new light on cultural cliches and presumed histories.

All works featured in this exhibition demonstrate an irrepressible desire to bring deep themes to the surface with humour and an incredible attention to detail. 

Artists:

Kaylene Whiskey, Ngura Pukulpa – Happy Place, 2021
Yankunytjatjara artist Kaylene Whiskey envisions a world where pop culture collides with traditional Anangu culture.

Jason Phu, Analects of Kung Phu, Book 1, The 69 Dialogues between the Lamp and the Shadow, 2021
A guide for surviving contemporary life through the lens of martial arts films.

Deborah Kelly, The Gods of Tiny Things, 2019
A kaleidoscopic video unleashing vivid collages of animated figures and landscapes. Cut free from old magazines and encyclopedias, exploring threats of extinction, climate crisis, colonialism, and global political shifts.

Zanny Begg, The Beehive, 2018
A non-linear experimental documentary exploring the unsolved murder of Sydney anti-development campaigner Juanita Nielsen.

David Rosetzky, Gaps, 2014
Embodies Rosetzky’s ongoing exploration of personal identity and the relationship – or ‘gaps’ – between self and other through speech, movement and dance.

Christian Thompson, Bayi Gardia (Singing Desert), 2019
Audiences are invited to walk through the landscape of Thompson’s childhood to witness a simple yet profound aesthetic gesture of the artist singing in his traditional Bidjara language, a recognised lost language.

 

COMING SOON

1 June – 6 December 2026

Art Gallery at Royal Park | Free entry

 

Am ACMI touring exhibition.

 

Commissioning Partners