Elvis Richardson b. 1965

  • Artist (Installation Artist),
  • Artist (New Media Artist)
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Elvis Richardson was born in Sydney in 1965. Currently residing in Melbourne, Richardson works in a variety of media including photograpy, sculpture and video.


Richardson was awarded a BFA from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales in 1992 and in 1996 obtained a Master of Arts, before gaining a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University, New York, in 2002.


Richardson’s work is primarily concerned with the mediation of social relations via technology. Bastard Love Child (2006/2008) gave form to personal experience and memory through the residue of defunct media. The work, comprising of hundreds of home-recorded VHS tapes built into a twisting DNA-like column, allowed the viewer to read the hand-written labels prompting personal recollections through a vast array of pop cultural reference points. Her contribution to the group show Reality Check (2009) – which examined the social and historical memory of a once-controversial reality TV program – juxtaposed billboard images of TV listings with VHS tapes with anagrams of the words “Sylvania Waters” (the program’s original title).


Richardson’s Televisuals: Salute Elvis (2008) reproduced test patterns once used by broadcast TV stations to calibrate signal and colour information as animated hand-drawn versions that contained an anagram of the word “televisuals”. In 2008 and 2011 Richardson presented iterations of the work NOW 7 YEARS LATER which examined the experience and aftermath of 9/11 as it was witnessed via television. Richardson herself was in New York when the attacks took place. Her direct experience of 9/11 lay in contrast to those she interviewed, who watched the events unfold on television. “I was struck by how people’s collective emotions were mediated by technology”, Richardson says. “By speaking to people who watched 9/11 from afar with distance and objectiveness, it made me rethink my own memory of the events”. – Elvisrichardson.com

Writers:
Scanlines
elvisrichardson2
Date written:
2015
Last updated:
2015