LONDON, ENGLAND.-This October, Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Sydney’s foremost for emerging artists, is proud to present new video works by Hayden Fowler and Grant Stevens at Elastic residence (Whitechapel, London). Following on from successful solo exhibitions at GBK, Fowler and Stevens will each present new video works in London for the first time.

Stimulated by the idea of a ‘post-terrorist West’, with its cries of defending democracy yet zealously advancing the policing of the population, Fowler’s “White Australia” is an acute, subliminally charged musing on the state of the nation. As white rats either push into or pour out of two portholes, auditory tones correlate to their movements. The work’s allusions to a complex political climate thus juxtaposes with the humorous and gawky performances of the rats as they execute the work’s systematic logic. This playful contradiction is typical of Fowler’s ironic but critically engaged approach to making art.

Meanwhile, in Stevens’ work “Like Two Ships”, metaphors no longer make sense, and sound and image struggle to keep pace with each other. For the past few years, Stevens has explored the languages of popular culture through his text, image and sound videos. In this work, a plethora of metaphors and clichés are combined together to form a short narrative. As a voice-over delivers the lines, words flash quickly on the screen – sometimes reinforcing but sometimes contradicting the spoken metaphors. The result is a fast-paced and disjointed experience of language, where the audience is challenged to recover some sense out of the sound and image.

Also available for viewing at the exhibition are a number of the artists’ existing works, such as Fowler’s “White Cock” and “Biosphere 1A”, and Stevens’ “Some Want It All” and “Danger Zone”.