Erin Coates Driving to the Ends of the Earth 2016. Video with sound, duration: 11:22 minutes. Composer: Stuart James. Camera: Sohan Ariel Hayes. Gaffer: Dion Borrett. Set Assistant: Shevaun Cooley. On loan from Erin Coates.
Erin Coates
Artist Showcase
Gallery 05 | Screen Space
Until 21 February
A decade of filmic works explore bodily thresholds in ways that are at once otherworldly and hauntingly embedded in the everyday.
Erin Coates is an artist, curator and writer whose practice includes sculpture, drawing, installation and the moving image. AGWA presents a survey of a decade of her filmic work, conveying the creative breadth of this output while retaining a single media focus.
Through these films played on loop throughout each day, Coates addresses the biggest concerns of our time: our precarious and destructive relationship with the natural world; a focus that unifies otherwise very different kinds of work. Her videos that use climbing and parkour rethink the social and physical restrictions that delimit our engagement with the built environment.
The body horror movies address nature exacting various kinds of revenge, and her car and road videos explore the psychological and environmental toll of our quest for individual freedom and movement. Underscoring these serious themes is a humorous and comedic touch, and a willingness to take personal risks as a performer.
Her work offers a buoyant celebration of cult film, TV and literature and an honouring of the restrained feel of performance art. The exhibition title videos and movies reflects her affiliation with both high and low-brow “movie”-making and experimental “video” art. As a result, her moving image works — several of which were made with Anna Nazzari — have been presented in both art world arenas and international film festivals.
“You can see my fascination with bodily thresholds resurfacing in my work again and again.” — Erin Coates, The View From Here 2021
