Press release for immediate release: 25/07/11

the fall before falltwo artists question the uncomfortable pleasure of the spectacle tinged with horror, and fascination with media events as shared cultural and generational memories.

The Fall beFore Fall contemplates the destruction of the World trade Center a decade after the event. Conceived as a memento mori (a reminder of death) the exhibition considers processes that animate our understanding of 9/11.

What: the fall before fall Where: Uts Gallery, level 4, 702 harris street, Ultimo When: 13 september - 14 october 2011. open mon-fri 12-6pmMore inforMation: utsgallery@uts.edu.au / www.utsgallery.uts.edu.au/galleryPress enquiries: holly.Williams@uts.edu.au / 9514 1652 / 0458 555 248

With a shared interest in how history, time and place are represented, artists Daniel Mudie Cunningham and elvis richardson will be contemplating 9/11 a decade after the event.

Conceived as a memento mori (a reminder of death), Cunningham and richardson present work that considers the cultural and social processes that animate our understanding of 9/11.

sydney-based artist Daniel Mudie Cunningham’s recent practice is based in melancholic readings of popular culture - examining how history as ‘event’ is structured and retold according to the conventions of film, music video and television.

in The Fall Before Fall, Cunningham’s multi-channel video installation Hold Your Breath (2011) recalls the horrific image of office workers falling to their deaths from the World trade Center as the attacks occurred.

Hold Your Breath also draws on the account of one of the hijacked planes that crashed when passengers foiled the terrorist plot portrayed in the 2006 film United 93. the film shows passengers attempting to keep the plane in the air for as long as possible, desperate to deny the inevitability of a crash landing.

in the work Cunningham re-imagines the falling bodies as eternally suspended – considering the impossibility of defying gravity as a means of survival. fragile and impermanent containers of human breath – balloons – are used to keep the figures perpetually afloat in a cloud streaked blue sky.

Notions of memory, nostalgia and ‘wound culture’ have repeatedly appeared in elvis richardson’s work. two works from 2008 will be restaged and reconfigured in the exhibition, including Now 7 Years Later which was first exhibited at fremantle arts Centre. for this ongoing project, richardson recorded herself asking people for street directions to the location of where the hoddle street massacre in melbourne took place, along with their memories of hearing about the event. every seven years richardson has committed to repeat the work, thereby tracking “how long it takes for a catastrophic event to fade out of people’s memories?”

CoNtiNUed oVerleaf

DetaileD DesCriPtion:

oPeNiNG tUesday 13 sePtember 6-8Pm

the seven years also references memorialisation as a means to revisit and repeat both playing homage while simultaneously recording its loss of impact. both 9/11 and the hoddle street massacre were televised live and interrupted normal network programming.

in her 2007 artist statement she writes “i was living in New york on september 11, 2001. a date that has become synonymous with shock and awe. a date that is fused with images of spectacular destruction. a date that is the ground zero of massive change.

however we may have personally experienced the events of that day it was the shared/collective medium of television that transmitted the news to each and every one of us”.

The artists in The Fall beFore Fall question the uncomfortable pleasure of the spectacle tinged with horror, and fascination with media events as shared cultural and generational memories.

Uts:Gallery / level 4, 702 harris st Ultimo / +61 2 9514 1652 / utsgallery.uts.edu.au / mon - fri 12 - 6pm

Uts Gallery supported by oyster bay Wines & Coopers. media Partner: 2ser

iMaGes clockwise from top / Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Hold Your Breath, 2011, video still, animation: Wendy Chandler. Courtesy of the artist. elvis richardson, Now 7 Years Later, 2008, digital video (still), 10mins. Courtesy of the artist and hugo michell Gallery, adelaide. elvis richardson, THE END 2008, video still, 8.00 minutes, soundtrack: frédéric Chopin, Piano sonata No. 2 in b-flat minor, op. 35 (“funeral march”) played by various performers [source: youtube]

aCCoMPanyinG PubliC ProGraM:

Panel DisCussion followed by exhibition opening: tuesday 13 september 4.30pm

floortalk with Daniel Mudie Cunningham: thursday 15 september 1pm

artist ‘in Conversation’ with elvis richardson: thursday 13 october 1pm

Events held at UTS Gallery, free, all welcome.