Catalogue > At random

Recorded at night with a humble camcorder over multiple excursions through indigenous and exotic flora, rhythmic observational studies chart real and imaginary wildernesses. Revisiting Thoreau’s Walden ideal, the sentimental appeal of taking an axe to the woods in white-settler colonies encounters postcolonial unease.

Gavin Hipkins (born 1968, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand) holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Auckland and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He is an Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts, the University of Auckland. His photography and moving image works interrogate how images create meaning through fragmentation and circulation. His work explores the nation state, particularly in colonised countries in an era of re-imagined communities and ideas of social and political utopia. His practice engages film as a cinematic art that blurs conventional genres of essay film, documentary and experimental narrative structures. Hipkins has exhibited widely in international exhibitions and film festivals including: CROSSROADS 2022, San Francisco Cinematheque (2022); Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Switzerland (2021); 25FPS Festival, Zagreb (2020); Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin (2020); Videoex, Zurich (2019); The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane (2018); International Film Festival Rotterdam (2018, 2015); International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2017, 2016); The Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Edinburgh Art Festival (2014); Armory Film, New York (2012); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011); Austrian Museum of Applied Art and Contemporary Art (MAK), Vienna, (2011).