06
Aug
YOUR DOOR ‘Orbit’ Hobart (MOP)
- By admin
12 July – 3 August 2013
Paddy Lyn space: Heath Franco – YOUR DOOR ‘Orbit’ Hobart (MOP)
Image: Heath Franco, YOUR DOOR, 2011, HD Digital Video, Stereo sound, 16:9, Duration: 8:17mins. Courtesy the artist and Galerie pompom, Sydney.
“The decision to use the front door of my suburban Parramatta (Sydney) home first came out of the desire to unite two separate works I was making at the time, being the video YOUR DOOR and a live performance in the ‘Cube’ at Oxford Art Factory, Sydney.
The way I found to connect these was the glass box factor- that is, the glass performance Cube at Oxford Art Factory, and the inbuilt glass fish tank right behind the front door of my home. The layer of video embedded in the fish tank in YOUR DOOR is documented footage of the Cube performance, suggesting a displacement of space and time, whilst dissolving the boundaries between the real and the imagined.
I also wanted to explore the idea that such a tight location could be home to a myriad of life that by looking closer you may come to see. I wanted to revel in the blissful possibilities of finding magic in the every day and mix it with the excited fear of unveiling a secret you know you probably shouldn’t have.”
-Heath Franco, 2012
Describing YOUR DOOR, writer Carrie Miller states:
It was a brutal psychological portrait of suburban life which demonstrated the artist’s laser-like ability to understand the devil in the detail of human behaviour, as well as his entirely unique way of expressing it through performance personas that are simultaneously bizarre yet oddly familiar. The characters that populate Franco’s videos are performed with a Brando-like bravura, a Dadaist sense of the absurd and the relentlessness of comedic genius Andy Kaufmann.
(Excerpt from Miller, C., 50 Things Collectors Need to Know 2013/Cool Hunter Predictions #1 Heath Franco (pp 86-89) Art Collector Issue 63, Magnesium Media)
Heath Franco (b. 1984) is a visual artist living in Sydney, Australia. In 2005 Franco completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts (UNSW) specialising in drawing and painting. Franco now works primarily in Performance-based Video and is interested in creating immersive and stimulating gallery Installations.
In 2012, Franco was signed by commercial gallery, Galerie pompom, where his solo show DREAM HOME was both a critical and commercial success; he was included in Art Fair Tokyo where YOUR DOOR was chosen for exhibition in the Project space, a first for an Australian artist; and he won the prestigious Churchie National Emerging Art Prize at Griffith University Art Gallery where his work was also purchased for their collection. 2013 will see Franco complete a commission for the ArtBank National Collection to be exhibited online in July.