TV Dinners

Featuring Eddie Peake (UK), LuckyPDF (UK), PsychoanalYSL (UK), Soda_Jerk (AUS)
Curated by Alana Kushnir
28 August – 15 September 2012
Opening Tuesday 28 August 6 – 8 pm
BUS Projects
Basement Level, Donkey Wheel House
673 Bourke Street
Melbourne VIC 3000
Australia
Open Wed – Sat, 12pm – 6pm

TV Dinners is an exhibition that positions itself on the troublesome line which separates the online and offline realms.  It distances itself from a number of recent institutionally-driven exhibitions – such as ‘Changing Channels’ at Museum of Modern Art, Vienna (MUMOK) in 2010, ‘Are You Ready for TV?’ at The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) in 2010 – 2011 and ‘Remote Control’ at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London in 2012 – each of which surveyed the history of the use of television as a reference and a mode by artists, with little or no concern for the flourishing relationship between television and the internet.
TV Dinners will present recent works by young British and Australian artists and art collectives whose practices are shaped by this relationship.  Episodes originally broadcast live from the Frieze 2011 Art Fair and produced specifically for the internet by LuckyPDF will be featured, as well as a new digital video by Soda_Jerk, which reworks an iconic film clip for a Bob Dylan sound track with the titles of popular internet memes.  PsychoanalYSL have replaced the space within the exhibition for the presentation of their work with media space.  On their behalf, a curatorial co-conspirator has sold this media space to brands operating in Australia for the advertisement of their products and services.  Documentary footage of a performance by Eddie Peake which incorporates projections of the artist’s old home video footage will also be featured.
These works will be animated in the gallery spaces of BUS Projects through the replication of the home living environment.  Visitors will be encouraged to sit back and relax on couches and even order and eat takeaway food.  Within this setting, the artists’ and art collectives’ elaborations on the creative force of nostalgia and its influence on contemporary culture will come to the fore.