Guildford Lane Gallery (Closed)

3 Selected Video Works

Colin Read

“A Vlexicon for Times of War”; “Drive”; and “We Sleep and Dream in Tele-Vision” are three video works by Colin Read, a Melbourne based video and multimedia artist.

Art Exhibition previously on at Guildford Lane Gallery (Closed) in Melbourne precinct, Victoria, Australia.
From Wednesday 03 December 2008 to Sunday 18 January 2009

Published by Guildford Lane Gallery on Wednesday 14 January 2009.
Contact the publisher.

The first video, “A Vlexicon for Times of War”, came about when Colin started watching old public domain “newsreel” style films, often created by defence departments during war-time. Watching these films, certain words seemed to resonate and Colin became aware that these words and phrases were put into visually emotive contexts. These contexts subliminally (although not always so covertly) swayed the viewer towards a “US and Them” viewpoint – “US GOOD, THEM BAD” – thereby justifying the “good fight”.
At the same time Colin wanted to maintain some connection between the text and each word’s original context, so the written text is ordered according to its original timecode placement in its original film. The collage images are then laid out on a grid similarly based on their original timecode placement. With this in mind it’s really quite nice to find (quite serendipitously) the last 3 clips place the decision and responsibility back onto the viewer.

The second video, “Drive”, is the result of many road trips. The Road Trip represents privacy, internal solitude, and a dreamlike state. Drive communicate this visually, in sound, and in text with some kaleidoscopic treatment to reflect the trancelike “Road-Trip” state of mind and added text from musings written whilst driving.

Finally, “We Sleep and Dream in Tele-Vision”, is built on the premise that so much go