Breaking the Waves
Lars von Trier - Breaking the Waves
Like Greenaway, von Trier is a filmmaker that tends to polarise opinion and Breaking the Waves is a good example of why. The first time I saw this film, I left the cinema unable to speak. Subsequent viewings have provoked the same reaction. Even after intensive study of it , I am unable to identify or articulate exactly what it is about the work that moves me. Everything about this film is disturbing - the shaky camera, the washed out colour, the eerie, painted intertitles (by Per Kirkeby) that punctuate the narrative, and of course, the gutting performances von Trier drags - intestines and all - out of the actors. Is it a film about redemption or damnation? Is it starkly truthful or deeply manipulative? I still don't know if I love it or loathe it but it is a film that continues to poleaxe me.
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Lars von Trier
Breaking the Waves |
Primo Levi - The Drowned and the Saved
Written 40 years after his first book, If This is Man, Levi's final memoir is a collection of essays that address his experiences as a Holocaust survivor - one of the 'saved'. He writes of himself, "I am a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual." His was a literate, compassionate voice that examined the very core of what it means to be human, in all of its inherent contradiction. I read this within days of hearing Derrida's dizzying lecture on the nature of Pardon - or forgiveness - in a post Holocaust world. It was a big week.
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Rosalie Gascoigne - Plein Air
If it were possible to choose only one artwork to take to a desert island, I couldn't. I would have to cheat a little and say: the entire first room in the Gascoigne retrospective at the Wellington City Gallery last year. It was a room that radiated intelligence and experience. Like the artful arrangement of a dinner party, the works were placed in a way that allowed for both lively conversation and companionable silence between them. In it were some of the artist's most beautifully cadenced pieces: Habitation, seven modest 'totems' in pale, chipped enamel and faded wood, the elegant Foreign Affairs, in ink on faded ply, and the boisterous, ever-so-Australian Parrot Country to name only a few. Gascoigne's vision was hawk-like: sharp, high and wide ranging and she was able to see, in the most singular, ordinary objects, larger universal rhythms and bring them back to earth for the rest of us - humming.
What better company could one ask for?
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Rosalie Gascoigne
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Jennifer wishes to thank Greg O'Brien and Sarah Farrar for their assistance with titles and placement.
Jennifer Buckley developed an interest in contemporary art through study in Canada and extensive travel in Europe and South America. She came to New Zealand in 1989 and established Oedipus Rex Gallery in Auckland in 1990. Jennifer is continuing her studies in contemporary theory, film and literature at The University of Auckland. The Oedipus Rex Gallery focuses on emerging artists - working in a range of contemporary art forms and practices - from taxidermy animals to good old fashioned figurative painting. As director of Oedipus Rex, Jennifer is interested in artists with courage who think and work for themselves and aren't afraid to make work that won't match your sofa.
Watch for: Angela Singer's 'Insides Outsides' (on now) and Richard Lewer's new show 'Impending Doom' coming up in October at Oedipus Rex.
OEDIPUS REX GALLERY
Upper Khartoum Place
Kitchener Street
1st Floor 32 Lorne Street
PO Box 6325 Wellesley St
Auckland 1 NZ
www.orexgallery.co.nz
Tel: 649 379 0588
Fax: 649 309 6652