Inside Angelica Mesiti’s Tank Commission at AGNSW

20 Sep Inside Angelica Mesiti’s Tank Commission at AGNSW

Posted at 02:15h in Art, Latest News, Ocula Magazine by Sam Gaskin

Source Credit: Content and images from Ocula Magazine. Read the original article - https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/inside-angelica-mesitis-tank-commission-at-agnsw/

Mesiti said experiencing the previous commission by Adrián Villar Rojas ‘told me to embrace the darkness of the Tank (literally and figuratively)’.

Inside Angelica Mesiti’s Tank Commission at AGNSW

Installation of Angelica Mesiti, The Rites of When (2024). Seven-channel digital video installation, colour, sound. Approx. 30 min. Collection of the artist, commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for the Nelson Packer Tank, 2024. © Angelica Mesiti. Photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Jenni Carter.

Angelica Mesiti‘s epic video installation on seasonal rituals has been installed in a repurposed World War Two naval fuel tank at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW). The work makes its public debut on Saturday.

The Rites of When (21 September, 2024–11 May, 2025) is displayed on seven screens, one for every star in the Pleiades constellation. Their vertical orientation suggests giant smartphone screens, but their size—each six by three metres—and surrounds, displayed between the Tank’s tall columns, make them evocative of a cathedral’s stained-glass windows.

Ahead of the opening, Mesiti shared highlights and challenges of creating the compelling new work.

Angelica Mesiti in the Tank at the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ Naala Badu building. © Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photo: Jenni Carter.

You’re the second artist to exhibit in the Tank, following Adrián Villar Rojas, who showed five large sculptural forms. From that presentation, what did you learn about how you wanted to use the space?

Seeing AVR’s project was really inspiring. It told me to embrace the darkness of the Tank (literally and figuratively), and it confirmed to me that leaning into the particularities of the architecture was going to serve my ideas best.

In popular culture, collective seasonal rituals are sometimes viewed with suspicion—the movies Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019) are examples of a Christian-coded suspicion of pagan rituals. How do we overcome that barrier?

You know I didn’t rewatch either of those films during my research. The work is not focused on pagan rituals but rather collective activities that are enacted in sync with moments in the seasonal cycle. I’m asking questions about how that was done in the past and how might that still exist today.

What inspired the vertical format of the seven screens?

The vertical screens in the Tank make reference to our phones as the main way we send and receive moving images today. As a moving image artist, I’m deeply interested in the circulation of images and our behaviours around them. The images on screen in the work are sometimes portrait orientation—a format which dominates our media environment—focusing on our own image. The landscape format—the orientation of cinema—is used to show images of groups that are fractured and split across multiple screens.

This was a huge effort, working with a number of collaborators across different locations. What were the highlights of producing The Rites of When?

One highlight was Tank Testing week in June 2022—playing with sounds and light in the Tank with sound designer Bob Scott, Sarah Blasko improvising vocalisations, and Bree Van Ryke playing with percussive possibilities. This week of experimentation was a joy to discover the resonances of the Tank and how we might be able to make it sing!

Developing the performances with an ensemble cast—more people than I’ve worked with before—was another highlight. I loved the rehearsal process and the ambience on set. I love that electric energy when everyone comes together after months of work and it all happens in the moment in front of the camera. You build a camaraderie with the crew and performers and it’s really magical.

For the Solstice sequence there was a lot of testing to get it right and in the end we shot in a film studio outside Paris. The technical aspects were challenging, which made getting the results very satisfying.

Can you share any revelations you had while translating your themes into dance?

For the Winter Movement, I was very specifically interested in the traditional Circle dances that have been performed for millennia by people across the planet as a form of collective dance and celebration. These dances don’t require any formal knowledge but are accessible to everyone and easy to participate in.

I was interested in the function of these collective performances in seasonal celebrations like solstice celebrations or harvest festivals. We looked at many traditional choreographies and tried to reimagine a new dance that could be performed in an urban car park around our bonfire of discarded construction materials. I also really wanted the dance to generate its own music so clapping and body percussion was an idea from the start.

Your Tank Commission opens to the public during the spring solstice in the southern hemisphere, days after Chinese people all around the world celebrated the Mid-autumn Festival. The calendar and the seasons are increasingly out of alignment—tourists in Japan have been caught out, for instance, only arriving when the cherry blossoms have already finished blooming. What seasonal shifts and disconnects did you encounter while making the project?

There were quite a few. For the winter snowy forest sequence, it was really hard to find a location where there had been snowfall last winter. We had to be reactive and when it finally did snow heavily in one of our desired locations we had to be ready to travel and film within 24 hours. We later learned that those days were the only snowfall they had all season—highly unusual.

Also, the harvest sequence filmed in La Bauce in central France would not have happened had we tried to film this year as the crops were very badly affected this year by unseasonal weather which has been devastating for farmers. The fire that you see in that sequence was not planned but in fact a devastating effect of extreme temperatures that is becoming more frequent. —[O]

Source Credit: Content and images from Ocula Magazine. Read the original article - https://ocula.com/magazine/art-news/inside-angelica-mesitis-tank-commission-at-agnsw/

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