“Screen Test (Australiana) - Suicidal Synthesis”
John A. Douglas
17 Aug → 8 Sept 2007

In these works, John A. Douglas juxtapositions two rural suicides from the films Walkabout and Wake in Fright. These video performances are a reflective synthesis between the two characters; one trying to get out of Sydney, and committing a sacrificial suicide, the other attempting to take his own life after a binge on alcohol. The work embodies a ravaged masculinity and self-destructive psychosis in the Australian landscape that is as relevant now as when these films were produced. Douglas revives the aesthetic of cheap Australian TV dramas of the sixties and seventies in an attempt to foreground the forgotten narratives that lay buried deep in the past revealing the nature of our culture.

John A. Douglas was born in Australia in 1960. He studied visual arts at College of Fine Arts, Sydney, completing a Masters degree in 2007. His video and photographic works explore the heightened aesthetic experience of cinema that critiques cultural and gender identities and constructs new meanings within the critical context of contemporary art practice.