I caught this story on the weekend about a young Australian artist, Shaun Gladwell, whose slow-motion film of a skateboarder recently auctioned for $84,000. The film is called Storm Sequence and is a five minute clip of himself (a previous skateboarding professional) skating at Bondi Beach in Sydney on a stormy, wet day. His video was the first piece of DVD art to go under the hammer in Australia. Currently exhibiting as part of the Venice Biennale, a place he calls a ‘skateboarders hell’, his work seems to capture the act of creation by skateboarders, break-dancers and other people whose pursuits occur in the abandoned warehouses, dark lit streets and away from the public eye of the mainstream. Gladwell is currently in Australia to open his largest ever solo exhibition, curated by Blair French at Artspace, in Wooloomooloo. The exhibition is titled Shaun Gladwell: Videowork, and among many other works, features Busan Triptych, 2006, a film of a Korean BMX champion who nonchalently rides his bike into an art gallery and performs tricks in front of beautiful calligraphic scrolls. Challenging, creative and sure to encourage discussion, Shaun is an Australian artist on the move. Pun intended.
