Anastasia Klose [Australia]

“As if on a cloud” | video

venue: Spiz 7 Gallery, Chmielna Str.

 

When filming this blighted pigeon, my friend was talking about her centerlink experience [‘centerlink’ is the Australian Government’s department for health, social and welfare payments and services]. She didn’t think her candid conversation was going to make it into my video, but I loved her turn of phrase. And then the music and the pigeon seemed to work. Obviously it is a sad work, but it is also enigmatic, and funny. Hard to explain really why it turned out the way it did. I always wanted to make a pigeon video, and the unscripted dialogue seemed to add another element – the boring everyday tasks we have to endure (aka centrelink/work), the aspiration towards something greater, the failure, the poignancy and dignity of an earnest failure, and then sickness and death. [Anastasia Klose 2009]

The soundtrack of “As if on a cloud” is composed of the ambient sounds of a street café in Melbourne city and includes a conversation in English between two women, the artist and a friend, as if overheard in the background which includes the phrase ‘as if on a cloud’ from which the title is drawn. The music soundtrack is “Adagio for strings” by Samuel Barber; performed by the Cincinnati Pop Orchestra (Telarc, 1997).

Anastasia Klose was born in Melbourne in 1978. She is known for her autobiographical videos and performances, although she also draws, and has written poetry and prose. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1995 (Melbourne University), then went to Victorian College of the Arts and completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing in 2005. Recent solo exhibitions have included ACCA Pop-Up Program, a 3 day performance titled “Nanna, I am still searching…” at the Venice Biennale Vernissage, curated by Juliana Engberg (2011); “i thought I was wrong, but it turned out i was wrong…,” at the Australian Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide (2010); as well as at Gertrude Street Contemporary Art Spaces and Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne, and participated in group exhibitions at ACCA (Melbourne), PICA (Perth), Goma (Brisbane), Queensland University (Brisbane) and the IMA (Brisbane). Significant recent group exhibitions include Primavera 2012, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia, Sydney curated by Anna Davis; Contemporary Australia: Women, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2012); and “Don’t hold your breath” the NZ-Australia video art program curated by Rob Garrett in the inaugural AIVA Festival: Ängelholm International Video Art Festival, Ängelholm, Sweden (2012). Anastasia Klose lives in Melbourne and is represented by Tolarno Galleries.