The backyard is where cricket begins. On summer days, siblings all over Australia battle it out for long hours. Despite the very real chance of a ball hurtling through windows or onto the roof, this period of trial and error is a critical time for any budding cricketer – as Adelaide-based artists Trent Parke and Narelle Autio are well aware.
“Most of it you’ll learn in the formative years of your life in your backyard,” Parke says of the sport. “By the time you start playing cricket at a club you’ve already done six, seven, however many thousands of hours against your brother. That point is when you learn the most about the game.”
Parke and Autio may well have logged a similar number of hours recently, albeit behind the camera. Their new collaboration, multi-channel video installation The Summation of Force, is a filmic love song to cricket, shot largely in their own backyard. Through the game-play of the artists’ two young sons, it traverses a dreamy suburban narrative about passion, skill and corporate cricket: Parke describes the work as “charting the course from the innocence of the backyard to the professional athlete”.
In The Summation of Force, the path to excellence and televisual spectacle – a wrestle of talent, training and science – plays out across three acts. The boys are seen moving through backyard games, a team selection process, and rigorous routines complete with biometric equipment. Slow-motion shots draw out the physical elements contributing to ‘force.’
“We’re interested in the biomechanics of it, how the body moves,” says Parke. “You watch the [professional] bowlers – they’re amazing, almost like dancers.”
Awash with symbolism, The Summation of Force meditates upon an industry defined by nostalgia, rigid competition, and the science of motion.
The Summation of Force
Trent Parke and Narelle Autio
SAMSTAG
30 June – 1 September
The National Gallery of Victoria has unveiled their summer blockbuster exhibition for 2024–2025. Yayoi Kusama’s signature polka dots and pumpkins, along with world-premiere work, will appear in Australia’s largest retrospective exhibition of the Japanese artist.
Annika Harding’s latest work at NorthSite Contemporary Arts, focuses on the Atherton Tablelands, exploring the tension between natural beauty, relentless meteorological forces, and the built environment that supports local agricultural communities.
Parrtjima—the Northern Territory’s annual festival of lights at the Alice Springs Desert Park—is entering its ninth year, and this time the immersive festival’s focus is interconnectedness.
The three separate exhibitions that come together in Tales of Land & Sea, speak to Arthur Boyd’s sense of justice, his desire to break down barriers between class and cultures, and his deep love of the ancient myths that still speak to humanity.
White Rabbit Gallery’s latest multimedia exhibition, A Blueprint for Ruins, explores the ongoing destruction and renewal of urban spaces in modern China, with works from over 20 contemporary Chinese artists.
With scores of artists in the current 24th Biennale of Sydney, we look at nine artists from around the world participating in the event, from a Japanese queer icon to a Polish film director, to creations of Māori barkcloth to Indian tattoos.
