“Untitled (Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata)”
Benjamin Bannan
3 July → 1 Aug 2021

Benjamin Bannan, ‘Untitled (Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata)’, 2020, single channel video, 10 min 32 sec, installation view: West Space Window, Collingwood Yards, 2021. Animation by Jack Caddy, audio by Rachel Salmon-Lomas and Lia Tsesmelis. Photography by Janelle Low.

Untitled (Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata) is a single-channel video work that disassembles Giotto Di Bondone’s painting of the same name (1295-1300), and restages the composition into a fiction. The figures of Christ and Saint Francis have been removed from the landscape, negotiating a separation between figure and ground. The perspective circles the projection of stigmata, articulated as abstracted lines of transference, demarcating the tension between two absent bodies.

This project is supported by the City of Yarra.

ID: A rectangular screen suspended on a pole inside a glass vitrine: the West Space Window. The screen depicts a grey animated image of a chapel-like structure with one window off to the side just underneath its roof. Another similar structure sits in the background along with four lines suspended in the air.

Benjamin Bannan's research-lead practice spans video, installation, sculpture, and drawing, and interrogates metrics of modernity through social, cultural and aesthetic lenses. Benjamin participated in the 2019 Festival Lab facilitated by Perth Festival, and was a recipient of the Lowensteins Arts Management Award in 2020.