About

Through painting, neon, video and experimental sound the War and The Cooked makes a critical analysis of contemporaty war media and it's negative affect. The media image has become so abstract we don't know what's real anymore. The image has morphed into a hyper senory frenzy bombarding our minds daily like an air raid itself. The War and the Cooked Teo Treloar, Rhys Turner and Melissa Ramos Featuring painting, neon, video and experimental electronic sound work The War and the Cooked is a critical and satirical analysis of the technological visualisations of contemporary war and conflict and the influences that have brought Australia into the current world conflicts. Using Disney as a metaphor for the global power of America the work appropriates images and footage from the worldwide and juxtaposes them with some well known cultural products. Touching on the ideas of both Claude Levi Strauss and Leo Strauss the focus of the work is on the power of myth. This is looked at within the context of the global media system’s representation of the War on Terror and the War in Iraq and how an idea of reality is supplanted onto the spectator. The idea of scripted news events are analysed within the context of the work then reworked and satirised, conversely, the enforcement of an idea of democracy and capitalism through the global media is also reoccurring theme within the work.

Artists

Teo Treloar

Teo has an MVA from Sydney College of the Arts and is currently enroled in SCA’s PhD program. He has exhibited throughout Australia including shows in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth; He has also been featured in shows in Japan and England. Teo has also had several articles published in the Australian Contemporary Art and Culture magazines “Runway” and “Machine”

Rhys Turner

Recently completing a Masters of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts in Media Arts and winning an Australian Postgraduate Award for the degree, Rhys Turner has been exploring new media modes since exhibiting in the students section of 2001: A space Odyssey: Sensation and Immersion, NSW Art Gallery 2001. His work moves through different new media forms form web (www.digital-dirt.com.au) to DVD (Industrial 3x3), CDROM and interactive sound programs (Synaesthesia 1).

Turner’s most recent work Video Stereo and Tracer is a part of his current body of work Etherscapes. Video Stereo uses a 1200 Technics turntable, a computer system and a modified 1960s stereo unit to allow the audience to physically interact with video and sound. Tracer takes another step and uses a web camera to track audience movement in the space and then triggers different video clips. Both these pieces explores how the influence Media effects society and attempts to reverse that process by giving control of the Image to the audience. Other themes of his work develop the idea of non-linear, chaos and ‘micro’ narratives as well as alternative interfaces and the digital aesthetic. Turners work challenges traditional modes of perception in hope of promoting thought and ideas of current social trends and ‘Image’. Websites: www.rtek.com.au www.digital-dirt.com.au

Melissa Ramos

Melissa Ramos is an emerging new media artist. Graduating in Electronic Arts at the University of Western Sydney, School of Contemporary Arts in 2003. She frequently uses, as the setting for her projects, places marked emotionally and sensitive in some specific way, conducting multi-layered realities on nature, culture and technology issues. Producing a body of experiments from video, sound, installation, site specific, performance and web base artworks.

Melissa Ramos has exhibited in Sydney, Performance Space, Gallery 4A, First Draft, Casula Powerhouse, Fairfield Art Centre, Blacktown Art Centre, Scott Donovan Gallery, Art Gallery of NSW and internationally, Kuala Lumpur National Gallery, Manila Metropolitan Museum, and Bangkok National Gallery.

www.formations.rtek.com.au