Silent Film 2023

single channel video 5:21min

The Lock Up Contemporary Art Space , Newcastle

(photos by Ben Adams)

The artist would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which is video was made on, the Awabakal people. For the video work Silent Film, Consalvo has created a sequence of long gestural imagery, close up and slowed down, the movement is generative, engaging the viewer to respond. Silent Film reminds us of the artists paintings in terms of composition, minimalism and emotional provenance. The subtitles compound to make a part of each aesthetic structure. Anticipation gains momentum as hands move towards one another but may never touch, they are reaching out to ‘something’, reminding us that there is often more in silence than in that of sound. In the actions or holdings, as the artist calls them, there is a reverence, there is fragility, there is release and an overarching anticipation as we sit within something small and quiet with very little to anchor us from drifting away.