Kym Maxwell, If Transmission Were Material, September 10th  –  20th,  2015, Abbotsford Convent, Mural Hall

Installation view, Kym Maxwell, If Transition Were Material, 2015, Abbotsford Convent, Mural Hall. Image: Patrick Rodriguez

If Transmission Were Material, September 10th  –  20th,   2015, Abbotsford Convent, Mural Hall

Medium: 7 VHS Channel Videos presented on 6 1990's monitors and 1 HD monitor (6 Single Channel V8 works in various loops, colour and mono sound. 1 HD video, 6 mins looped, stereo sound and colour), I Acro Prop, 5 mannequins in vintage clothing, electrical cords and power boards, 6 black steel tables, tape

‘If Transmission Were Material’ was a solo exhibition of selected V8 and mini 8 video dairies from 1994 –  2001.

In this exhibition Maxwell exposes her earliest video diaries and ponders their relevance today, post-internet. She considers how video may perform in the same way social media does today, fulfilling a sense of belonging and artistic contemplation. Video acting as social index. Her installation posits, if transmission is material, then how does it accentuate through medium and technocracy?

Maxwell poses, how was video of the 1990s the medium of self-discovery, identity and social status? How has this media transformed today?Set within the secretive and alluring confines of Mural Hall (an often unused causeway) within the Covent building where she creates a unique site-specific installation. This anachronistic installation within Mural Hall’s cavity foregrounds Maxwell’s development of a visual language via her first recordings with her first video camera purchase in 1994. The work details her benign and fraught experience living abroad and her development of a lifestyle as videographer of awkward social negotiations and public events. Her work is a personal narrative pre-internet which defines her earliest artistic interests in an ‘experience economy.’

As a multi-disciplinary artist Maxwell work traverses social strategy, installation, community immersion and interaction, which has previously engaged with a wide variety of audiences.