DOES SHE KNOW

12 January - 1 March

Curated by Xanthe Dobbie

Genevieve Pikó

Does She Know is a two channel video piece using appropriated footage from Accident (1967). One man asks the “Does she know?”  to which another man replies “I don’t know”.  What starts as a linear repeating dialogue quickly breaks down as the footage glitches and the two channels become out of sync with each other. Through the looping of a small moment other elements take on new importance. The creek of a floorboard, the car horn in the distance, the intake of breath; all of these moments become cues and imbued with importance. This repetition becomes humorous but also covers darkness beneath. 

The woman that they are discussing never appears or speaks. These everyday phrases take on an element of violence in the overlapping interruption as well as the control and suppression of the woman’s voice.  She is unable to control her own narrative and though my interventions haven’t been able to give her a voice have perhaps discredited theirs. 

Genevieve Pikó is a Melbourne based artist working predominantly in video installation, using appropriated footage to explore ideas of gender, memory, time and trauma. Pikó takes a painterly attitude to the digital, embracing the ‘glitch’. Viewing television and film as a repository of collective memory, screening and looping is used to subvert narrative expectations, to symbolically represent mental fragmentation and decay.

Pikó completed her Bachelor of Fine Art (Honours) at RMIT in 2015 for which she received the Vice-Chancellor List Award. She has shown works in galleries such as Blindside ARI, Kings ARI and Rubicon ARI.

Image | Genevieve Pikó, Does She Know, 2014, HD video, 2min56sec (looping), still from video. Courtesy of the artist