Staff Profiles

Research

John Gillies is an artist who works primarily with time-based media and forms such as video, performance, installation and  music. The survey exhibition John Gillies: Videowork 1982 - 2001 curated by Blair French, toured Australia 2004-2006. His work has also been shown at the Tate Modern, Museum of Modern Art, Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Museo Reina Sophia, National Museum of Korea, Tramway (Glasgow), ACMI (Melbourne), MCA (Sydney) and in the London, Sydney and Melbourne film festivals. He is a former recipient of a Creative Fellowship from the Australia Council, an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant and was a long term board member of the Performance Space, Sydney.

His video work is held in public collections including the National Gallery of Australia; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane and the Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan.

The exploration of sound and image relationships, and collaboration with performers has been central to his  work. Those collaborators have included The Sydney Front, Clare Grant, Jon Rose, Matt Prest and Tess de Quincey.

As a musician he has recorded and played with diverse range of musicians and composers including Jon Rose, Great White Noise, Kev Carmody, Stephen Vitiello, Chris Abrahams, Sheriff Lindo, Radical Son, Rik Rue, Slaughterhouse and also composed scores for performance works by De Quincey & Co and Open City.

He has also curated of a number of video art programs in Australia, Spain and Brazil.

http://www.acmi.net.au/2006/artists/acmi/johngilles.html

http://johngillies.com/

Teaching

John Gillies is head of the Time Based Art major of the BFA, BFA/BA and MArt. At COFA he has also taught courses in Performance, Sound Studio, Sound/Performance/Installation, Video Art, History of Video Art and History of Post WWII Cinema. He has also taught at the University of Sydney; University of Newcastle; University of Technology, Sydney and the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Research Supervision (selected completions) 

Folded Cosmos: A Cultural Response to Contemporary Physics, Caspar Fairhall MFA 2012

Citing Home: Imaging, Mnemonics and Spaces of Identity, Marina Batanic PhD 2011

Navigating Viewers: Montage, Space and Meta-art in New Media Video Installation, Atanas Djonov PhD 2011

The Sound of the Sun: Soundscapes and Intermediality in Texts of Heiner Müller, Eva Müller PhD 2011

Natural History: Video, Performance and Site, Angelica Mesiti MFA 2010

Conversations and Transformations: The Poetics and Politics of Engagement, David MacKenzie MFA 2010

Rendering the Real: Towards a Musical Landscape, Scott Morrison MFA 2010

The Parlyamente of Sprytes: A study of the fantastic and cinema’s relationship to the real, Simon Trevaks MFA 2009

The Pathology of the Camera: Tracing the path from collaboration to cooperation between camera and performer, Denis Beaubois MFA 2009

Extending beyond technique: an exploration of resonance, mimicry and improvisation on the Harp, Clare M. Cooper MFA 2008

Zero Return: directions in sound and image, Nathan Thompson MFA 2007

Surface and Projection, Louise Curham MFA 2006

After the Skin, Mahmoud Yekta MFA 2005

Composite Perceptions and Reflections: a migrant artist negotiates non-indigenous belonging in Australia, Michael Schiavello MFA 2004

Experimental interfaces: physical placement and participation of the spectator in interactive installation environments, Mari Velonaki  PhD 2003

Our Park: a case study in reflexive documentary, Gillian Leahy MFA 2000

Current Research Supervision

Remembering Barbara Cleveland: Gender and the Construction of Contemporary Australian Performance and Media Art History, Diana Smith PhD

Identity and Self-Representation explored through the medium of fictional documentary,  Ludwig El Haddad MFA

Real/Ideal: Utopian Narratives in Contemporary Culture, Josephine Skinner PhD

Transformation: an experimental doucumentary on Trans-sexuality in Iran, Vahid Vahed MFA

Enduring figures: gameshow hostesses across time and continents, Elena Knox PhD

Amateur Histories: The Artist as Historian, Stella MacDonald MFA

The Live Camera in Performance: Bland Project, Measure for Measure and This Kind of Rukus, Sean Bacon MFA

The Transformation of Portraiture and the Moving Image: self-representation in a global age, Léa Donnan MFA

The Lived Experience within the Act of Creation, Harriet Body MFA