Drifting: Julia Burns

Drifting, by artist Julia Burns is an immersive, 3-channel video-based installation, integrating real objects with full-scale interactive video characters in an expanded cinematic context.

Its core themes are domesticity and public access to private space. Viewers enter into a private domestic setting within the public space of a gallery challenging the division of the public and private domains. In an ironic twist, the same media that threatens privacy, is used to reproduce it.

As it surpasses the dominance of TV, internet-based video will give both established media channels and ordinary individuals the same stage from which to project video content.  We have already seen the explosion of webcam and home video-based content on YouTube. This content, which in many instances glorifies the banality of everyday life, is published by the Public and for the Public. The personal view into homes across the world that it facilitates gives the anonymous public privileges that it never had before. In addition, these captured private events are broadcast side-by-side on the same platform as popular media content. This warrants a re- examination of the concepts of privacy and its deterioration under the public eye.

Drifting represents an intimate moment in a couple’s life. The couple in the artwork are not aware that they are being watched. Only after they realize their situation do they acknowledge their audience: The gallery viewers. Viewers are invited to watch this scene unfold in front of them as they sit on the couple’s own living room couch.

Upcoming Tour Dates
Dubbo Regional Gallery, 10 Sept to 13 Nov 2011

Past Tour Dates
Griffith Regional Art Gallery, May 2010