MEDIA RELEASE 27 June 2008
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Daniel Crooks, Imaginary Object #1, still, 2007. HD/DVD.
Courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery
Daniel Crooks, Pan No.2 (one step forwards, one frame backwards), still, 2007. DV/DVD
Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu. Purchased 2008. Courtesy of the artist and Anna Schwartz
Gallery
everywhere instantly
‘Once you’ve seen a Daniel Crooks DVD you’re not likely to forget the experience,’ writes art critic Edward Colless.
‘Confronting and captivating, these digital video works provide a truly altered perception of the world.’
Christchurch Art Gallery is bringing New Zealand audiences their first ever opportunity to see the work of this New
Zealand-born artist in depth. Using his renowned ‘timeslice’ technique, the Melbourne-based artist transforms everyday
sights such as trains and city streets into wide-screen meditations on perception, motion, urban life and the speed of
life.
Exhibition curator Justin Paton describes Crooks’ art as “creating a world where time warps and billows, slows down and
stretches out, fans into a thousand slices, and then ripples back into itself. These days everyone feels as though they
have too little time. But Crooks creates videos so mesmerising and strange that we have to make time for them.”
Despite exhibiting throughout Australia and internationally, Crooks’ extraordinary video works have never been screened
in his home country. Reaching from a thirteen-metre-wide screening of his mesmerising Train no.1 to the serene recent
series Imaginary Objects, the exhibition everywhere instantly will bring eight of these spectacular works to New Zealand
audiences.
“We’re very excited to be showing Daniel’s innovative work, and we think it will resonate with other exhibitions in our
programme,” says Christchurch Art Gallery Director Jenny Harper. “Daniel makes unexpected but perfect company for
Laurence Aberhart’s photographs, which also evoke a slowed-down experience of time. Together they make up an exciting
“time-travelling” season at the Gallery.”
The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated colour catalogue with texts by film critic Adrian Martin;
screen scholar Sean Cubitt; Los Angeles Times art critic David Pagel; and science fiction novelist Greg Egan.
Born in Hastings in 1973, Daniel Crooks is a graduate of the Auckland Institute of Technology and the Victorian College
of the Arts School of Film and Television. He received an Australia Council Fellowship in 1997 to research motion
control at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. His works have appeared in ‘Primavera 2003’ at Sydney’s Museum
of Contemporary Art and exhibitions in Europe, the UK, the United States and Asia. Crooks has held solo exhibitions at
Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam; Level 2 Project Space, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (both
2005); and the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2002). He was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie van
Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2004–05) and at the Australia Council Studio, London, UK (2005). His numerous awards
include the 2001 City of Stuttgart Prize for Animation and an Australian Short Film Award at the 1996 Sydney
International Film Festival. He is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.
Daniel Crooks: everywhere instantly will be at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu from 18 July until 9 November
2008.
ENDS