Armada
single channel video and sound installation
video projection on sail of boat, stereo sound 1994 - 1998
Gillies displaces the linearity and telelogical impulse of colonial and industrial history. The past and the present are squeezed together; sounds of old and new trains are mixed, short-wave radio signals generate another space and another landscape. He fuses these sounds and images together as part of an ‘infernal machine', a hegemony that is rapidly spinning into crisis and obsolescence.
Linda Carolli, 'Tall ships / Tall tales, Armada: a video work by John Gillies', 1998
first installed: Griffith University Art Museum, Australia & Museu Arte da Moderno da Bahia, Brazil
curated by: Marguerite Bonnin (Brisbane, Australia), Rosana Almeida Oliveira (Bahia, Brazil)