ELVIS RICHARDSON
TELEVISUALS SALUTE ELVIS
SAT 1 UNTIL SAT 23 FEBRUARY 2008
TELEVISUALS SALUTE ELVIS explores the passivity of the medium of television. Television never tells us what the date and time is; it exists in its own reality. You only know you're in another geographic time zone through the presence of commercials. Television is continually in the business of re-quoting itself. It is self referential, repeating topics along the same trajectory. Television is so generic that it broadcasts news at 6pm no matter what country you are in. It is broadcast from ONE place by ONE voice that we are subject to. Our only choice is to turn it off.
The now obsolete television test pattern was once the image broadcast when there was no programming. It told the viewer 'please stand by, we will resume our normal telecast shortly'. Television test patterns were also used to calibrate monitors and cameras so that the viewer at home could tune their television set to receive the correct signal. This idea was also used in radio, most importantly for the BBC and SHIPPING NEWS. The only television test pattern to survive is the BARS - the image that accompanies most video editing software.
The title anagram, TELEVISUALS SALUTE ELVIS, is used as a methodology for Elvis' artistic exploration. The artist has chosen twelve anagrams and put them together to form a kind of story. That the last anagram reads SALUTE ELVIS is a humorous reference to the dictatorship-like quality of television. The anagrams suggest a certain ominance or warning, secret messages guised through satire.
Elvis Richardson currently lives and works in Melbourne. A PhD candidate at Monash University, she trawls op shops, rubbish piles, auction houses and archives looking for images and objects that attempt to record time or possess an aura of an individual yet are dislocated from their provenance. Elvis acts as a devoted fan and forensic investigator of these objects that she uses as the raw material of her practice. Elvis holds an MFA from Columbia University in New York and an MA and BFA from the University of New South Wales. Recent exhibitions include her 2007 'Slide Show Land' at Canberra Contemporary Art Space and 2005 'Hoddle Street Massacre' at Ocular Lab. Elvis is represented by James Dorahy Project Space in Sydney.
TELEVISUALS SALUTE ELVIS presents new and revisited works from Richardson, supported by the City of Yarra.
