“Tide”
Martine Corompt
27 July → 18 Aug 2012

Standing at the shoreline, gazing out at the vast limitless expanse of ocean, what do we expect to see? Our future? Possible impending doom? The tides of cultural change? Clichés, like visual caricature, are a form of reduction and in a visually saturated culture where the emphasis is continually on fidelity, resolution and realism, what place does the stylised simplistic and flattened pictorial representation have as an affecting experience? The western impulse to ‘make real’ the artificial has driven image technology away from the graphic and towards mimesis. A long sheet of paper becomes a swirling vista as the animated tide-line laps at its edges, and then resumes its blank material properties as the water recedes.

Martine Corompt works with moving image installation with a specific interest in ideas surrounding animation such as anthropomorphism, caricature and the animate space. Much of her work is collaborative and interdisciplinary, seeking to incorporate sound, space and image together. Works such as Dodg’em (2000–06) an interactive sound installation, with Philip Samartzis, or No Answer (2006), a collaborative public artwork with artist Philip Brophy commissioned by the City of Melbourne, are especially mindful of the modulating effects of one medium upon the other, as well as highlighting the more direct relationship between spectator and artwork. Martine is currently undertaking a PhD at VCA Melbourne Univeristy, and teaches in RMIT’s School of Art.