Exhibition Sittings: Bill Viola

Bill Viola at Art Gallery of South Australia

 The Encounter, 2012 colour HD video on plasma display mounted on wall 19.19 mins Performers: Genevieve Anderson, Joan Chodorow photo: Kira Perov 

Fire Woman by Bill Viola. Photo: Kira Perov

The Bill Viola exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia was extremely eye-opening in that I was familiar with the video works of the artist but had never actually experienced them in person. I found that the video works were able to capture and hold my attention for extended periods of time whilst actually doing very little. The work that I found most interesting was the work The Encounter. This piece featured two women, one older and one younger, walking across a desert plain toward the camera. They do not interact with one another until they reach the foreground and then switch sides before walking away, back towards where they had initially begun. I was struck by the sense of presence of the work. It quietly demanded attention and suggested notions of the passage of time, family relationships, and growing older. I think that this work is incredibly open to interpretation, not directly in the actual work itself but purely in the sense of where the viewer is taken by the piece. The intention of the work may be to do just that, to simply transport the viewer to a place within his own mind. I found that as I was watching the two women slowly approach the camera my mind wandered and I thought of my own personal relationships and directions in life. I think for the purpose of intention the artist allowed an openness for perspective and thought process within the audience.

I found this work very important in terms of what it was able to do. In my day to day busy life of routine I found myself in a quiet interaction with a video, the length of which I was unaware. This, however, was not a concern. I felt as though the work brought a stillness with it that was so powerful and I felt as though time was no relative. This is an interesting and powerful aspect of all of the works that were in this exhibition; if the video had already appeared to be halfway through I felt the urge to wait until it started again and watch the whole thing, even if I was able to correctly assume what had happened so far.

The space in which the works were exhibited were taken over by the works. The whole space was changed to a viewing station for these works. Most of the works took over one whole wall of the space and I found myself overwhelmed by the size of the gallery space; I wondered whether I had ever noticed the sheer size of the rooms in which these exhibitions were held. I liked the way that the work was able to force me to consider my surroundings. I particularly found it effective that the wall on which The Encounter was displayed was also displaying the work Walking on the Edge. The juxtaposition of these two works, side by side, worked to allow the viewer to deepen their interpretations of both works by comparison to one and the other. 

Viola, within these works, took interesting scenes of activity or what seemed to be inactivity and created an environment where the viewer felt compelled to be part of. I felt as though these works made me feel very insignificant in terms of my physical presence. The thing that I find very interesting about video work is that if the viewer is to walk in front of the projector the work will be displayed on their body. I found this extremely interesting in these works particularly; when members of the audience walked in and out of the rooms the works seemed to still be commanding and owning their presence by portraying onto their bodies.

These works are so powerful and I would have only changed the size of the gallery to have been able to house more within one exhibition. The works are spiritual, profound, intimate. They seem to be screaming silently, quiet in their noise.