Still Lives: Melbourne
Commissioned by RISING 2022
Presented with National Gallery of Victoria
Artists: Luke George and Daniel Kok
Players: Annie Mack, Jason Ball, Jasper Pittard, Jim Marks, Simona Castricum
Rehearsal Models: Ash Snare, David Prakash, Leah Landau, Richard McKimm and Emily Blyth (standing in for Simona Castricum)
Videography and Editing: Non Studio (James Wright, Eugene Perepletchikov)
Lighting design: Katie Sfetkidis
Sound design: Nick Roux
Production Manager: Emily O’Brien
Technical Stage Manager: Zara Jones
Rigging: Element Rigging
Rope Consultant: Ash Snare
Project Consultant: Jerril Rechter
Guest-of-Honour: Andrew Krakouer
Photography: Gregory Lorenzutti, Michelle Li
Recipient of two 2022 Green Room Awards - Contemporary & Experimental Performance: Outstanding Achievement + Design & Technical Achievement
STILL LIVES is a durational and site-specific performance installation series, in which artists Luke George and Daniel Kok ‘capture’ (with ropes) a significant moment or a movement in relation to its cultural context, time and place. Binding cultural objects and bodies in their place to allow new conversations to emerge and unveil hidden narratives regarding local history, social memories and personal attachments.
In STILL LIVES: MELBOURNE, the artists collaborated with five Australian Rules players to capture a moment in time bound by rope, recreating a spectacular mark from football history, the 2011 AFL Mark of the Year by footy legend and proud Noongar man Andrew Krakouer.
As the mass of spectators gathered in the Great Hall of the NGV to witness the process of creating this suspended tableau, the players were transformed into living sculptures. The connection between art and sport, the players and the game they love, and the powerful influence of football becomes an object of interrogation. Urgent issues, such as sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia within sporting culture are revealed through the knotty negotiation between bodies.
Supporters
Still Lives: Melbourne was commissioned through RISING’s A Call to Artist initiative, a program supported by Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne and Besen Family Foundation. Supported by Chunky Move through a Minimax Initiative.
Other commissioned in the series:
STILL LIVES: VENICE
June 2019, Venice Biennale
STILL LIVES: MARINA BAY
May 2023, Singapore International Festival of the Arts
STILL LIVES: FLORENCE
June 2023, Secret Florence Festival / Fabrica Europa
STILL LIVES: FREMANTLE
November 2023, Fremantle Biennale
STILL LIVES: AUCKLAND
March 2024, Auckland Arts Festival
"A near spiritual experience today watching the kind of art that moves you in ways you can’t quite find the words to express. In a city where football is a religion it was fitting that art should intersect so powerfully with sport in the Still Lives installation as part of RISING.
Only in Melbourne could you bind five footy players with rope and suspend them in mid-air in the NGV’s Great Hall to recreate a famous mark of the year – Andrew Krakouer’s 2011 hanger in a game between Collingwood and Adelaide.
The players re-enacting it, represented a range of diverse groups the AFL hasn’t historically treated well – women, Indigenous players, and trans and gay footballers. The living sculpture they created over three hours was a breathtaking representation of the complex power dynamics at play in Australia’s national sport and the work it still has to do to tackle sexism, racism, transphobia and homophobia.
It was an intensely emotional experience and it reminded me of how important art is in challenging and changing cultures, making us feel and making us think, and being the spiritual balm for the soul we have all sorely missed these past few years.”
Jill Stark, author and journalist