Works <30s No.46-55 – with Lou Hubbard
Nathan Gray
28 Mar 2021–15 May 2016
Works < 30s No.46-55 evolved out of a discussion about death between Nathan Gray and Lou Hubbard which formed part of Nathan's show Work With Me Here, 2015. During the discussion Lou set Nathan the task of creating 10 new works based on their recorded conversation. The resulting work feature's Lou's words subtitled over footage recorded on a road trip around the south island of New Zealand.
Works<30s is an ongoing series of short video and performance works (since 2013) all under 30 seconds long that use brevity as strategy. View the series at http://www.nthn.gy
Unfolding from a series of succinct studio and on site experiments Nathan Gray’s work approaches the object as a score for action. Aiming to improvise with the given, the found and the pre-made he uses brevity, precision and humour as strategies to open possibilities in restricted material circumstances.Using his background in experimental music his work draws on a body of knowledge that is shared between art and music.
Nathan Gray, Works <30s No.46-55 – with Lou Hubbard, 2015. HD colour video, 6:19min.
Blindside PLAY is an online video space dedicated to showing experimental local and international video art from emerging, mid-career and established artists.
This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.
Nathan Gray Gray's works use the voice as a medium and take the form of lecture-performances, radio plays, narratives, and rumours. These works expand the sonic possibilities of the spoken word by means of microphone technology and digital processing, often demonstrating scientific or perceptual phenomena using the voice as an example with curious, sometimes humorous conclusions.
Gray's exploration of experimental oratory includes hosting The Weirding Module, a radio program that explores the spoken word in contemporary art and experimental music, co-curating The Mouthfeel concert series with Lucinda Dayhew and Rogue Syntax: Primer, an audio series featuring Makiko Yamamoto, Danni Zuvela, and linguist Dr. Rikke Bundgaard-Nielsen a podcast series that explores linguistics from an artistic perspective.
His 2014 multi-channel video installation Species of Spaces was shown in the 19th Biennale of Sydney and was the winner of both the Substation Contemporary Art Prize and Substation People’s Choice Awards. It is now part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.
His 2012 Tarrawarra Biennale sculptural/performance work entitled Treatise pages 77 and 131 was reshown and performed in 2017 at The Score at Ian Potter Museum of Art and my work Score for Dancewas shown at Open Archive in 2011 and ACCA in 2014.
His film works have been shown at Close Up Cinema in London, Christchurch City Art Gallery, Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery in Auckland and City Gallery in Wellington during 2016 and presented by Liquid Architecture (Australia), The Audio Foundation (Auckland) and North Projects (Christchurch).
He has had numerous solo shows including Work with Me Here, 2015 at RMIT DesignHub, Things That Fit Together, 2014 at Utopian Slumps, Theorist Training Camp, 2012, at Westspace and ACTS, 2012, at Utopian Slumps.
In 2015 he curated the exhibition The Object as Score, based on his masters thesis of the same name. He attended residencies in Japan, Brazil, New Zealand, Indonesia, regional Australia, and more recently several residencies in Germany.
His recent performance lectures have toured to Taiwan, Greece, Austria, Germany, France, Norway, Poland and Australia in 2017-18 and writings have appeared in Un Magazine, the book Assuming Boycott published by the New School / Vera List and Writing & Concepts published by Art + Australia 2018.
Martina Copley is an artist, curator, educator and writer interested in different modalities of practice and the annotative space. Working in film and sound, drawing and installation, her doctoral research project at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, 2019, considered the transposition of the rhetorical figure of the aside as a poetic strategy in art.
Recent exhibition projects and publications include Strange Alchemies [Heavy Breathing], with Bridie Lunney and James Carey, RMIT Project Space, 2022; Offering: A Fragmentary Index, with Josephine Mead, Liquid Architecture live Mono-poly, 2022; Pant and doorbell thump__ is wants wants, with Lou Hubbard, BUS Projects, 2020; The other writing, Seventh, Melbourne, 2020; Doubting Writing/Writing Doubt, ACCA + RMIT non-fiction Lab, 2019; No Notes (This is writing), with Francesca Rendle-Short, 2017; Unhidden, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne, 2017; Between these worlds there is no ordinary continuity, Melbourne Festival, 2016; FM[X] What would a feminist methodology sound like? WestSpace, Melbourne, 2015; A Listener’s guide to bowing, Melbourne School of Architecture & Design., 2015; Black Painting, seventh, Melbourne, 2014; New Ancestors, City & Docklands Libraries, Melbourne, 2014; At dawn the image rings a dissonant tune that is inaudible to our ears and cannot be recalled, with Michaela Bruton, BUS Projects, 2014.
Martina works with contemporary artists and creative organisations as an independent curator of contemporary art and gallery manager in public, commercial and artist-run contexts. Selected curatorial projects include; the humbleness and the cut away, Blindside Mobile, 2022; Works<30s No.46-55 – With Lou Hubbard, Nathan Gray, 2016, BLINDSIDE PLAY, Melbourne; I always read by listening to the text, 2014, Platform, Melbourne; Bridie Lunney: The place where the fire is kept, 2014, Phoenix Foyer Commission, Melbourne; Self Species, 2012, LaTrobe University VAC Gallery, Bendigo & Maroondah Gallery, Victoria; The Five Obstructions, 2011, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, VCA, University of Melbourne; WALK, national touring exhibition, 2009; The Time It Takes, 2009, Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, Victoria.
Martina is a lecturer and tutor at RMIT University and at LaTrobe College of Art + Design in Melbourne. She is an Artistic Director and the gallery coordinator at Blindside Art Space.