“Timing (or: What is the secret to good comedy?)”
Nick Selenitsch and Arlo Mountford
19 Apr → 11 May 2013

Timing (or: What is the secret to good comedy?) will consist of series of collaborative kinetic sculptural works exploring the concept of Time. It is the second collaborative project between the artists following their exhibition Movements at RMIT Project Space/Spare Room in 2011.
For Timing machines in the gallery will be linked to a series of sensors placed in and around West Space. These sensors will trace the movements and daily happenings in the immediate and distant environment: the traffic in the street; the opening and closing of a door; the comings and goings of West Space staff and visitors; dawn and dusk and even the movements of particular constellations across the sky. The process of marking these intervals will turn the exhibition space into something of a time mapping machine. As a live recording of daily events the machines will dance their way to a kind of unexpected aural and visual theatre: a theatre of the rhythmically absurd.

Arlo Mountford is a Melbourne based artist, who has exhibited regularly since finishing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2002. In 2003 he took up a studio residency at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. Arlo has been included in numerous group exhibitions including Unguided Tours, Anne Landa Award, Art Gallery of NSW (2011), 21st Century: Art in the First Decade, QAG (2011), New Acquisitions in Context, MCA (2011), NEW010 ACCA (2010), ShContemporary: Best of Discovery Asia Pacific Contemporary Art Fair, Shanghai (2008), Contemporary Australia: Optimism, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (2008), Heide Museum of Modern Art (2008) and Adelaide Biennial (2006). Arlo’s most recent solo exhibitions have been at La Trobe University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2011), Shepparton Regional Gallery (2010), Centre of Contemporary Photography (2009), The Art Centre Chulalongkorn University Bangkok, Thailand (2009), Conical (2008) and Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces (2007). In 2007 Arlo was awarded the ABN AMRO Emerging Artist Award and completed a residency at the Frank Mohr Institute, Groningen, Netherlands. In 2012 Arlo travelled to Tokyo, Japan as a participant of the Australia Council for the Arts Studio Residency program.

Nick Selenitsch received a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) with Honours from the VCA in 2003. He completed a Masters in Cultural Material Conservation at the University of Melbourne in 2005. Recent solo exhibitions include Felt, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2012; Structural Goals, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2011; Movements, (with Arlo Mountford), RMIT Project Space, Melbourne, 2011; Linemarking, Y3K Gallery, Melbourne, 2010; and, psychic income, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, 2009. Recent group exhibitions include Inside Running, Fremantle Arts Centre, Fremantle, 2013; Onside, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney, 2013; Shifting Geometries, Embassy of Australia, Washington, DC, 2012; Rainbow Eaters, West Space, Melbourne, 2012; New Psychedelia, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane, 2011; Freehand: Recent Australian Drawing, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2010; and, gone in no time (gone in no time), Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, 2009. Selenitsch was the recipient of the 2009 Qantas Travelling Art Prize. In 2010 he undertook an Australia Council Skills and Arts Development studio residency in Helsinki. From 2006-08 he was a Studio Resident at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne. Nick Selenitsch is represented in Australia by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne.