Constance ARI

Weight of gesture explores ideas of what creates and negates meaning for the individual in contemporary Western society.

The daily actions, gestures, and interrelations of family and friends, gathered using an informal documentary approach on digital video, culminates in an installation focussing on the interplay between two juxtaposed images and an associated audio track. The imagery's focus on external gestural exchange combines with the articulation of candid details of the (unseen) subjects' internalised relationships in the monologues, creating a dialogue between the work and the viewer, and allowing space for the viewer to become part of the conversation. By bringing into focus seemingly inconsequential actions and gestures, the work invites reflection on how we move and interrelate within daily life.

Heloise Roberts and Richard Munsie have come together through similar conceptual concerns, whilst studying in the visual arts masters program at WAAPA in Perth.

In their previous work, both artists have documented the circle of friends surrounding them. Munsie's Evidence exhibition at PICA in 2000 comprised photographic prints of him and his friends, over-painted to exclude everything but the human figures. Roberts' Anaesthetic or Enlightenment at Verge Inc. in 1999 was an audiovisual installation documenting domestic ritual, whilst her Illuminations at Fremantle Arts Centre in 2002 contrasted still imagery with an audio track taken from unseen subjects. All these works explored the intimate action.