Please join us for the Opening Night of 'in(di)visible', a participatory video-sound installation by Ben Ferris recorded in Paris during his 2017 Cité Internationale des Arts residency awarded by The Power Institute.

Thursday 3 August, 6 - 8pm

How much of the present can we comprehend? What of it is (in)visible to us? And how will we talk about it in time?

Ben Ferris’ videos look like still-life paintings, idyllic images of the river Seine and Notre Dame. Classic, postcard views. The familiar, and thus comforting, sights. But still-life paintings are also always the symbols of latent decay. A 'picture-perfect' captured just before, or just as, the rot surfaces and becomes visible to the eye.

In Ferris’ work, the disjunction between the illusion of the exterior and the reality of the interior is explored through the discordance between the image and the sound which peels off, layer by layer, the full reality of the captured moments.

Underneath what the eye can see, the invisible socio-political (and resulting psychological) changes are brewing. The innocence and surface tranquility of the 'still-lives' is thus contrasted with and disturbed by the turbulence of events.

The present will always be understood only in the future, with delay.

Curated by Artemis Projects.

ARTIST TALK: SATURDAY 5 AUGUST, 2PM

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ben Ferris is one of the founders of Sydney Film School, where he is currently the Artistic Director and a writing/directing teacher. Ferris, a film writer/director, has screened films and won numerous awards in Paris, New York, Croatia, Italy, Tokyo, Singapore and Amsterdam, as well as having theatrical releases of his works in Tokyo, Croatia, and Australia. His short film ‘The Kitchen’ (2003) won the Grand Prix at the Akira Kurosawa Memorial Short Film Festival in Tokyo in 2005, and his short film ‘Ascension’ (2004) won the Grand Prix at the 4th One Take Film Festival in Croatia in 2004. His debut feature film ‘Penelope’, an Australian–Croatian co-production, screened in National Competition at the 56th Pula Film Festival in Croatia in 2009, and won a Van Gogh Award for Best Fantasy Film at the Amsterdam Film Festival in 2010. In 2016 he completed his second feature film ‘57 Lawson’ which captures daily life within a social housing building in Redfern, under the shadow of impending development. The film is currently on the international festival circuit. In 2015, Ferris was the curator of the Sydney Cinémathèque. His writings on cinema have been published worldwide in both French and English. To see some of his previous work visit https://vimeo.com/bferris.