Phantasm #3

By Andrew Frost

The latest exhibition in the Performance Space’s Halls For Hire series is Alex Davies’ Phantasm #3. The series, which mounts exhibitions and performances in town and church halls and community spaces around Sydney, arrives at the Petersham Bowling Club. Or more precisely, in its basement. In its gloomy rooms “…two researchers are conducting an experimental investigation to determine the cause of unexplained electronic media aberrations that have been reported on the site since the turn of the century.”

Visitors to the show are asked to assist the researchers in documenting what might be psychic apparitions of the undead, or perhaps a record of their presence in the walls of the building itself.

Davies, whose recent installation Black Box Sessions at UTS gallery was a huge-scaled extravaganza of theatrical staging and behind-the-scenes electronic gizmos, is an artist with a love of magic, misdirection and the science of apprehension. While the set of his works are elaborate, there is a canny acknowledgement of how the illusion is staged, partly a conjuring trick on the part of the artist, but also a collaboration with the audience. You have to believe to see it.

Until September 23

Petersham Bowling Club, 77 Brighton Street, Petersham.

Pic: Courtesy of the artist & Performance Space.