ON NOW- Over Here, Over There- Bonnie Lane

"Over Here, Over There"
Bonnie Lane
BUS gallery
20 May- 07 June 2008

ON NOW

Bonnie Lane is becoming quite proficient at combining her minimalist video work with sculptural or installative elements within the gallery space. In an exhibition earlier this year at Seventh gallery, Lane projected a video of her bust onto a white bed which created a ghostly double of herself, composed of light and restricted to existence inside the bed. This poor soul can never feel the sweet release of sleep, instead she lays conscious, looking up at the ceiling and the viewer, eternally living the works title: “Sleepless”.



Both “Sleepless” and “Over Here, Over There” feature the play of very selective and specific video and installation. Lane seems to prefer to create video that encompasses a minimalist ideology in the sense that, at first, the videos appear to be static images until the viewer notices the subject move ever so slightly. Lane projects both herself and he partners faces, lying sideways in bed, on two walls that meet in a corner. The figures look at eachother across the gap of the corner, the audience also getting caught in the large width of the gaze, privelidged to be involved in such an intimate connection. The floorspace between the projections, is that of an oversized bed surface, doonas and pillows repeated like it an organic bedded growth protruding from the corner and mirroring in 'real-space' the beds that form the grounding element in the video component of the work that the lovers lie on.

Lane described the work as an exploration of “longing to be utterly and entirely connected to another person” and as predicted, Lane has focused on the more pure elements of an intimate relationship. The ‘gaze’ here is the unspoken connection, a shared understanding through presence without words. Findlay (seemingly more genuinely tired than Lane) looks forward, meeting the viewer and his partners eyes, despite his heavy eyelids, to be comforted in Lanes clam, large, doe eyes. Each are both lost in eachother, serene and inviting the viewer to share that connection with them.

SOON- Over Here Over There- Bonnie Lane

“Over Here Over There”
Bonnie Lane
BUS117 gallery
20 May -7 June 2008

SOON

Bonnie Lane graduated from the VCA (painting department of the Art school) at the end of last year and proving there is life after 'art school' she has been in a number of exhibitions and competitions, exploring personal and relational qualities within her own life. Bonnie walks a fine line between being, in essence, an installative artist and a sculpture/object maker. He work focuses closely in on one of three people orientated subjects: herself, her boyfriend Matthew Findlay and/or their relationship together.

Her work in the graduate show was a timber, boxlike structure, in which life size photo’s of the walls of Matthew’s home were hung to give the impression of being in their space. It was personalised further with an audio component: a recording of ‘live’ homely conversations between the two. Some of his furniture also included in the space and a pile of their laundry next to the couch, gave the impression it had been pushed aside, evidently unfolded.

More recently she took out the 2008 Moreland Sculpture Show Ephemeral Award by reconstructing a lounge room again, this time it was one that focused on the objects within by not including walls and placing the furniture within an invisible floor plan in the outside area of The Coburg Leisure Centre. The work also hints at sustainability as all the suggestively personal items were collected from street side hard rubbish.

Bonnie describes “Over Here Over There” as being: “a video installation that creates a multi-sensory experience of sight, sound and touch that explores the longing to be utterly and entirely connected to another person”. Whilst “entirely connected to another person” sounds a lot like she’s suggesting intimate, sexual closeness, don’t be disappointed if there is nothing in any way sexual when the work is revealed. Bonnie has a penchant for exalting the more sweet, pure and demure aspects of a loving relationship rather than the cheapness of the act itself.