ENEMIES! - TCB Gallery
Documentation by Nina Rose Prendergast
Part video work, part installation, ENEMIES! at TCB Gallery is a send up of the Melbourne arts scene that’s as funny as it is true. I’ll admit, when I first walked into TCB and saw two coffins, my expectations plummeted. Death of the artist, death of creativity, death of art were the first things that crossed my mind. The computer, perhaps too reminiscent of those I’ve spent my career working on, did not beckon me in. I turned away and took a look at Emma Nicole Berry’s a week long waiting room, filled with colour and images and prose before contending with Brunswick's own corporate hellscape.
Putting on the headphones, I turned my attention to the main event, the mediation session between two artists “at war.” Featuring Stefa Panoschi and Diego Ramirez curated (and mediated) by Thomas Stoddard, the video is on loop, allowing two viewers at a time to sit in on the session and bear witness. Striking a chord between absurdist humour and achingly real, the video and exhibition descend more into the weird the longer you tune in. I watched the whole thing, noting down line after line. “Stick to politically hesitant formalist sculpture” truly spoke to me, even if it did mystify my parents when I brought it up at dinner later. It wasn’t just the video, but the entire space that demanded your attention to detail. The wry humour extended to the trash, the fake plant, the R U OK Day conversation cube.
“The art scene is so paranoid they might believe that Stefa and I are actually vampires.” Panoschi and Ramirez may or may not be vampires - I cannot confirm or comment on this until I have expanded my knowledge and outlook from my limited living point of view and heard from those who are undead and have (un)lived experience. Vampires or not, they make great art. They made me laugh, they made me feel seen, and they made me place a hold for Debt: the first 5000 years at the library. Undead or alive, I’m ready for a video art resurgence.
ENEMIES! (and a week long waiting room) are on at TCB Gallery until March 29.