Birrarung River, Kit Wise, Yarra River, 2014
Summary
The art practice of Melbourne-based artist and academic Kit Wise ranges over photography, sculpture, drawing and digital animation.
In February 2014, Wise created a commissioned performance work – what he has called a ‘living drawing’ – for the Birrarung Project, curated by Maudie Palmer for the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. This urban project comprised a choreographed performance by eight kayakers pulling 20-metre-long coloured banners in a changing formation on the waters of the Yarra (Birrarung) between the Swan Street and the Morell Bridges. The work referenced the design languages of aquatic sport and marine architecture, foregrounding the river as a dynamic social space.
As well as the real-time performance, Wise created a short video work using several HD cameras and shot from various perspectives (further highlighting the river as a social space through the unrelated activities that unfold around the kayakers), and as a series of photographic stills to document the performance. The photographic still held in the Art and Heritage Collection was taken towards the end of the performance and purchased a few months after the work's execution. This C-Type digital photograph is printed on Epson art paper.
The Art and Heritage Collection also holds three works from Wise’s ‘Elsewhere Series’ – numbers 2, 4 and 5 – photographic mash-ups that consider the experience of location in our increasingly transcultural world.
