Exhibitions

• Laura

  ERIC METCALFE
  April 24–May 29, 2004

  Metcalfe’s long-standing practice in performance, video, installation, ceramics, and sculpture, has consistently drawn from popular culture, including film and television, jazz improvisation, and the graphic novel. In Laura, Metcalfe looks in detail at film noir, a genre of great importance to film and cultural theorists over the past three decades.

  Centred around a ‘missing woman’, the Vera Casprey novel Laura of 1942 and the 1944 Otto Preminger film adaptation exemplify the classic motifs of crime fiction and film noir. In this new installation, Metcalfe takes on the role of ‘auteur’, a continuation of his ‘oeuvre’ that includes the 1980 video Steel and Flesh. He collaborates with writer Nancy Shaw, and editor Michael Turner in the voice-over script for the sound track, in which Shaw performs; renowned jazz pianist Paul Plimley and sound artist Peter Courtemanche collaborate on the score. Ceramicist Gillian McMillan and sculptor Rick Ross work with Metcalfe in the design of the set pieces for a remarkable new installation that transforms the gallery space into a sound stage that the viewer can enter. Paring down to a few significant elements the lush opulence of the film noir set, and including vintage lighting, draperies and ‘painting’, Metcalfe investigates the strong influence of this popular genre on both contemporary art practice and his own artistic development. Placed in relation to the on-going film location work in our neighbourhood, the dramatically lit storefront space will reflect back to the street one chapter of the history of Hollywood.

  Postscript 15: Mark Harris on Laura (PDF)