5 AUGUST 2015

GOMA CELEBRATES THE MOTION OF ART WITH NEW EXHIBITION

The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) will present a selection of works by one of Australia’s leading contemporary artists, when ‘Daniel Crooks: Motion Studies’ opens at the Gallery of Modern Art from 8 August to 25 October 2015.

Amanda Slack Smith, the Gallery’s Associate Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, said Melbourne-based Daniel Crooks has made a significant contribution to new media art in Australia and internationally.

‘Daniel’s practice explores the elasticity of time and space. Working across moving image, photography and now sculpture, he is best known for his 'time slice' projects which isolate and offset small slices of video footage to create mesmerising studies of people and the world around us’, said Ms Slack‑Smith.

The exhibition includes the syncopated rhythms of Crooks’ early video works Elevator No.4 2003, Train No.1 2005 and Static No.9 (a small section of something larger) 2005 as well as the compelling fluidity of moving image works such as Static No.12 (seek stillness in movement) 2010.

‘Recently, Daniel’s practice has evolved to realise his ‘motion studies’ in new sculptural forms that capture the beauty and fluidity of motion. These new sculptures will be shown for the first time in Queensland,’ said Ms Slack‑Smith.

As part of the opening weekend, exhibition curator Amanda Slack-Smith will be in conversation with Daniel Crooks at 1.30pm on Saturday 8 August in Cinema B, GOMA. The event is a chance to gain insights into the artist’s career and current practice and will be followed by a screening of selected recent video works. New Zealand-born artist Daniel Crooks is a graduate of the Auckland Institute of Technology and the Victorian College of the Arts School of Film and Television. In 1997 Crooks received an Australia Council Fellowship to research motion control at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Crooks has won numerous awards, commissions and grants including the Basil Sellers Art Prize, Inaugural Acquisitive Award from Melbourne’s Ian Potter Museum in 2008, the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission in 2014, Ars Electronica Futurelab Residency in Linz 2014 and a Creative Australia New Work grant from the Australia Council in 2014.

Crooks has been involved in group exhibitions at the Barbican Centre and Tate Modern in London and the Singapore Art Museum; and solo shows in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Netherlands.

For more information on the exhibition and artist visit www.qagoma.qld.gov.au.