CHRISTIAN CAPURRO’s BOOTLEG

By Benjamen Judd

One of our favourite Sydney galleries, Breenspace, is currently celebrating the first solo exhibition for one of their key artists, Christian Capurro.

Christian’s new body of work explores what he describes as ‘retakes on art’ and comprises new moving images developed during residencies in Lisbon and Vienna, plus a related suite of photographs.

The exhibition marks a dynamic shift for Capurro, expanding on his negotiation of contemporary image culture, its appeals and its deceits, and what it means to be living in its ‘wake’.

In this new work the digital videos are made exclusively with a phone-camera, often as extended single-takes and always handheld. They, along with the photographs, present surprising, at times highly charged meetings and spaces between works of art and their visitor/recorder. In these encounters, technology, the body, the unity and stability of the representation itself in reproduction, are put under pressure and their limits tested.

This exhibition presents an intriguing variation on the bootleg genre in its ‘retake’ of local and internationally known works of art: part homage; part theft; part fan/part foe appropriation; part critique; part re-mastering.

Bootleg: Retakes on art: new film and photography is now showing at Breenspace, Lvl 3, 17-19 Alberta Street Sydney.