HANGBANG (nightshift*)

The lifework of maverick Hobart artist, John Vella, goes on display at CAST Gallery from Saturday 30 October 2010. Hangbang (nightshift*) is a new installation constructed from artworks made by the artist over the past sixteen years that are not held in public or private collections. Hundreds of diverse objects will be accumulated, get numbered and be displayed in a massive assemblage. The daily business of the gallery - office staff, technologies and visitors - will also be recorded and the information employed in strategies designed to choose specific works for nightly interventions by the artist. These interventions can be viewed live from 9pm at night until 5am in the morning through a window inserted in the gallery’s external wall as well as through a raised veiwing platform exposing the gallery offices as part of the artist’s shifting diorama. During these nightly periods the artist will ‘live-in’ and reconfigure the installation, transforming the static archive of objects into a transient network of interactions while subjecting the artworks to forces beyond their making. The artist will explore ideas surrounding ‘work’ and ‘art’ in this performative installation; questioning the values inherent in the making of an art object, the object itself and the audience’s engagement with it, as well as the roles of an art institution in the making of art. In keeping with John Vella’s elusive artistic oeuvre, Hangbang (nightshift*) will be both playful and, at times, unpredictable.