Double Demerits

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday July 23, 2004

DOMINIQUE ANGELORO

NO TYRE KICKERS

Where Phatspace

@Projekt, Level 2, Room 35, 94 Oxford Street, Darlinghurst

When Wednesday-Saturday, noon-6pm, until July 31

More information 8354 0344

Two artists trash a treasured first car in a demolition derby.

Now that's art, reports DOMINIQUE ANGELORO.

Car classifieds testify to the history of vehicles. They give someone's cast-off heap of junk the chance to become another driver's treasured first set of wheels. In the exhibition No Tyre Kickers, Sydney artists Marley Dawson and Will French teamed up to track the revved-up past of Dawson's first car - a 1981 Toyota Corona.

The car (pictured) is the centrepiece of the multi-media installation.

Incredibly, the artists took the vehicle apart, then reassembled it to get it

into the third-floor gallery space.

The Corona is decked out in racing red, white and blues, its frame buckled and bent. The dinks in the panelling are like scars, mapping out key events in the car's past and fuelling the viewer's curiosity. This is a car that has obviously seen more than your everyday highway mileage.

Dual television monitors reveal the Corona's preparation and entry in the

State Championship Demolition Derby at Parramatta City Raceway. The Corona

got its racing stripes before Dawson took the wheel in the first round.

Within three seconds the vehicle received a pummelling that rolled it and knocked it out of the derby.

The artists reconceive the automobile crash as a form of sculptural practice by presenting the resulting car wreckage in a gallery context. Or, as the pair say,

"[We are] ready to put massive amounts of money and very little thought into a performance for the damned and damn stupid alike."

No Tyre Kickers tackles the conceptual collision of art and car culture, but

it also pulls up the bonnet on the workings of video. The artists captured the raw video material, then outsourced the footage to a variety of editors to produce

their own take.

The screening of multiple versions of the same footage demonstrates the potential of editing to tweak the viewer's perception of an event. The remixes have been engineered into different genres including a mockumentary, rock song and an abstract cut-up piece.

The greased-up world of the speedway has also infiltrated the gallery space in other ways. Viewers have to pass through a turnstile to enter the installation and don modified racing helmets to access the soundtrack of the video.

© 2004 Sydney Morning Herald

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