Derek Hart
moving image - mixed media - installation		 home selected works
2009-2010
2005-2008
1997-2004		 curatorial links biography / cv contact
selected works 1997-2004

A Maravilha do Rio de Janeiro, 2002, single or multi-channel video projection, varying duration, silent.

 

In 2002, the Brazilian television network TV Globo conducted a state-wide television survey called A Maravilha do Rio, asking the people of Rio de Janeiro to vote for what they believed to be the most beautiful of six iconic locations in Rio: the Lake, Guanabara Bay, Maracanã football stadium, Sugarloaf Mountain, the Beaches or the Christ the Redeemer statue. The television survey represented these locations using dynamic aerial sequences shot from a helicopter.

Facilitated by TV Globo, A Maravilha do Rio de Janeiro reshoots the six locations from the helicopter but in durational images and with the camera locked off. Using televisual language as a point of departure, and drawing on concerns of structural film, the work explores the situation of the camera in the environment: the helicopter is buffeted by air currents as it manoeuvres to hold its position hovering high in the air, or as it performs single formal movements such as turning 360° or tracking steadily forward. It's presentation in a gallery - projected onto suspended screens - can be understood as a continuation of the original television survey.

 

  

 

View of A Maravilha do Rio de Janeiro in 'Remote' at the Plimsoll Gallery,
Hobart, June 2006, curated by Vince Dziekan.

Click here to view exhibition website www.remoteexhibition.com

Beautiful Horizon, 2002, site-specific work, mixed media.

Conceived for a "celebratory setting free of balloons" event on the roof terrace of the headquarters of the Stadtsparkasse at Berliner Allee 33 in Düsseldorf, curated by PLUS Gallery, Düsseldorf, the curatorial strategy invited "works no larger than 15x10.5cm, max weight 12g, to be individually sealed in a weatherproof plastic bag attached to helium balloons together with a description of the project and a reply coupon. The 1st International PLUS Art Prize awarded to the artist whose work and balloon travels the furthest distance, and whose reply coupon is returned by the finder."

At the time of the event I was living in Rio de Janeiro and doing some translation work. The curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, Fernando Cocchiarale, had recently spoken at the 'Forum das Americas' conference (December 2001) in the Brazilian city Belo Horizonte. With his consent I translated his speech 'Between the global and the Universal: about cultural exchange in Latin America' from Portuguese to English. In a formal translation the name of the city Belo Horizonte is not translated. I adhered to this but used the English words for Belo Horizonte, Beautiful Horizon, as the title of my work. I emailed the transcript to PLUS in Germany to be attached to a balloon and asked them to take photos of the balloons being launched. I understand this work as a form of publication.

  

 

 

 

 

Hey cut it out, 2000, video, 6 mins.

   One of an ongoing body of work exploring a tension between the still and moving image using found footage. In this work, a short scene from the 1986 film Down by Law by Jim Jarmusch that is digitally manipulated to last six minutes, action is suspended and perpetuated, isolated from its original narrative context and re-invested with new meaning. Recently screened in 'Systems of Communication' presented by suek-artist and cogcollective at The BAckdoOR in Melbourne.

Delivery, 1998, site specific installation, St. Pancras Chambers, London.

  

Delivery comprised unmarked cardboard boxes sealed with tape, stacked on a pallette standing at the foot of the double spiral Grand Staircase in the entrance hall of the former Midland Grand Hotel. One box had been opened to reveal test tubes containing tiny revolving points of light, seemingly the source of a high-pitched sound reverberating in the space and causing all the boxes to vibrate.

Triplets, 1998, video and mixed media, 5 mins, silent.

   

Dealer, 1997, back-lit video installation, Hi8 video, 30 minutes. Shot at Westcliff Casino in Southend, UK.

    

In the right place at the right time, 1997, Hi8 video, 2 mins 50 secs, sound.

 

© Derek Hart 2011.

  

View of In the right place at the right time and works by David Hawley and Marco Fusinato in 'Contingency Plan', CAST Gallery 2006, curated by Philip Watkins. Photo by Peter A Robinson.