Penelope Cain is a Sydney-based cross disciplinary artist who works primarily with video, painting, photography and print. In Bull Market Cain continues her ongoing interest in the effect of contemporary culture and the built environment on the basic human condition. For the last 3 years she has been using “The City” as the frame of reference for her work, and, somewhat like an amateur urban anthologist, has been examining the adaptive expression of basic human instincts to contemporary life and the built urban/city environment.
This current body of work relates the terminology of the stock market to physical and instinctive motion. Cain shows business men fluttering in the sky, like a flock of hummingbirds, and others in free-fall as they twist around in a feline fashion, hopefully to land on their feet. Cain draws an obvious association between the motion depicted and the gravity-defying terminology of the stock traders such as free-fall market, speculative bubble and bottom fishing. In these works there is a compelling strangeness to these business-suited figures in such motion, as they flap, stretch, swim and tumble their way across the picture plane. The whole is a body of work that is in part irony and in part serious as Cain works through her theories of what it is that makes us human.
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PENELOPE CAIN
Curriculum Vitae
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2007: Bull Market, Ground Floor Gallery, Balmain, NSW
2006: Beam, video projections, assorted venues in Canberra city 2004- 2006
2004: Domestic Interiors, paintings, First Draft Gallery, Surrey Hills, Sydney
2003: Mall, Video installation, The Cube, Canberra Contemporary Art Space (CCAS), ACT.
2001: Naturalistic, video installation, shelves of IGA Supermarket, Canberra
SELECTED CURATED EXHIBITIONS
2007: Range of Motion 3 artist exhibition at WestSpace Gallery, Melbourne
2007: Figuratively Speaking: the Figure in Contemporary Video Art, Queensland University of Technology Art Museum, curator Simone Jones
2006: Experimenta: Vanishing Point National tour 2006-2007 assorted venues
2006: safARI, MOP Gallery, Sydney, June 2006, curators Lisa Corsi and Margaret Farmer
2005: Watching: DVD edition of curated video works, Runway Artist Magazine Oct 2005
2005: Experimenta 2005: Vanishing Point, Sept 2005, Black Box, Melbourne, curator Liz Hughes.
2005: Mira Como Se Mueven (See How They Move), April 2005, las Salsa de Exposiciones de Fundación Telefonica, Madrid, curator Martì Peran. www.fundacion.telefonica.com
2003: Fall in State Circuit: International Video in Canberra, DVD, Curator Martyn Jolly.
2003: Watched, in Domain 2003, Canberra, ACT, curated by Jane Barney, artsACT public art program.
SELECTED AWARDS, PRIZES, COMMISSIONS, RESIDENCIES
2007: Upcoming in October - Asialink residency at Taipei Artists Village, Taiwan
2007: Winner, The Churchie Emerging Arts Prize, Brisbane, QLD.
2005: Commissioned video for “Runway: Watching” DVD edition.
2004: Commissioned Camouflage, video installation for Experimenta
2005: Vanishing Point, Melbourne
2003: Artist Residency at Megalo Print Studios, Canberra, ACT
2003: Commissioned Watched for Domain 2003.
2002: awarded Megalo Access Arts printmaking residency.
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