Australian artists' Haines and Hinterding first Museum survey

Energies: Haines & Hinterding
25 June – 6 September 2015
FREE exhibition

The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia is thrilled to present Australian artists David Haines’ and Joyce Hinterding’s first major museum survey, from 25 June 25 to 6 September 2015. Featuring collaborative projects, solo works by both artists and a new MCA Commission, Energies: Haines & Hinterding is a comprehensive presentation of their multisensory art practices.

Curated by MCA Curator Anna Davis, this free exhibition spans experimental, digital, electronic and traditional media and brings together: interactive cinema, installation, virtual reality, sound, video, sculpture, aroma, photography and drawing. 

The artists, who live in the Blue Mountains and both teach at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, have been working together for over fifteen years. They are captivated by the unseen energies that surround us – including very low frequency (VLF) radio waves, television signals, paranormal events, satellite transmissions and psychic forces – and seek to reveal them to audiences through work that draws upon aspects of science, the occult and philosophy. 

Energies: Haines & Hinterding will take over the MCA’s Level 1 Galleries and expand beyond the gallery walls, with graphite antennas stencilled on the building’s glass facade, attracting electromagnetic energy from the atmosphere. Many of the works are also connected to energies beyond this space, such as television signals and radio waves, some emanating from stars in the Milky Way.

A wide range of public programs will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition, including artist talks, free art-making workshops, a three-day Energies in the Arts international conference co-presented with the University of NSW Art & Design (13–15 August), the August ARTBAR, a sun viewing workshop utilising solar telescopes, an aroma composition workshop, Art Baby tours, and Junior Art School workshops for budding artists, as part of the MCA’s school holiday program.

Every Thursday from 2–8pm and every weekend from 11am–4pm, visitors will also be invited to discover an innovative project using the virtual reality platform ‘Oculus Rift’, with next-generation headsets and headphones enabling them to explore two of Haines’ and Hinterding’s four-channel video works inside a virtual space.

MCA Director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor OBE said, ‘The MCA is committed to supporting Australian artists of today through our Collection, exhibitions and public programs. This exhibition enables the work of two fantastic artists – whose teaching and generosity contribute greatly to Sydney’s art community – to be available to a broad audience, many of whom will discover their practices for the first time.’

Expanding on their earlier game-based works, Haines’ and Hinterding’s latest work Geology (2015), commissioned by the MCA especially for this exhibition, uses computer-game technologies and a Kinect system for gesture-based interaction to create incredible simulations of the natural and supernatural world that the audience can explore.

Geology was inspired by a research trip the artists made to the badly damaged Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu in New Zealand after the devastating Christchurch earthquake of 2011. They describe it as an investigation of ‘how culture interacts with chaotic forces’.

Projected at over 16 metres wide in high (4K) resolution in one of the MCA’s double-height galleries, Geology is an amplified interactive cinematic experience. Its imaginary terrain has several different levels to explore, each one taking the audience deeper underground to discover hidden arcane energies. The first level is a seemingly endless rocky landscape, an immense vista flooded with golden light that we float across like spy drones over Afghanistan.

Like the earthquake-damaged gallery in Christchurch, the landscape of Geology is filled with cracks and voids that we soon discover are portals into different worlds. One level is a  psychedelic underground space of energy, sound and vibration. This level looks like a sparkling crystalline cavern, filled with reflective structures and huge floating rocks.

Haines and Hinterding taught themselves to ‘code’ in 3D computer programs over fifteen years ago and have been working in the area of 3D simulation ever since. They use computer game engines in a different way to conventional game makers - in that there is no killing and the audience is free to explore the virtual world.

Other works in the exhibition include Telepathy (2008), a bright yellow anechoic (echoless) chamber with a dark futuristic interior that visitors can enter to experience an absence of sound, The Levitation Grounds (2000), a video installation featuring huge floating trees now re-imagined as a work that can be viewed through virtual reality technology, and the enigmatic installation EarthStar (2008), which includes a video projection of the sun’s surface, antennas that detect radio waves from solar winds and two ozone fragrances.

More at mca.com.au

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