Composition with Royal New Zealand Airforce Red Checkers

Abstract

The project collaborated with the RNZAF Red Checkers Acrobatic Display Team where I composed a flight routine for five simultaneous C-4 Airtrainer aircraft for the action of the artwork (the documentation of which was finished as a large-scale video installation). The installation investigated the terms and processes of performance art and its implications for documentation as a concept. The work was first exhibited in the international art exhibition “Modern physics” alongside Shaun Gladwell (Australia's representative for the 2009 Venice Biennale), Bas Jan Ader (NL) and Hanna Schwarz (DE), at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, curated by Stephen Cleland. In 2010, Composition with RNZAF.... was curated into Unnerved; The New Zealand Project, a key survey exhibition of contemporary New Zealand art at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane (accompanied by a major catalogue). In 2010 the work was also included in the Accelerated Geographies Alex Monteith survey exhibition. The work has been discussed in detail in five peer reviewed international and national contemporary art journals and a 30min long TVNZ7 New Artlands documentary on the project aired in New Zealand in 2009.