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Powerful Australia: TV Moore
Vogue Italia March 2014
Francesco Spampinato
A 40-year-old from Canberra, Timothy Vernon Moore is one of the stars of the imminent Sydney Biennale, ?You imagine what you desire? (21/03 - 9/06), with a retrospective at the Campbelltown Art Centre. Despite the fact that he has lived in New York for some time, Australia remains one of his points of reference.
«The Australian landscape is magical: the desert, the sea, the colours. The lifestyle on the East coast is so special; it?s something sacred», explains ?TV?. «The suburbs in which I grew up were marked by a strange dichotomy between urban space and various alchemies and this has always provided me with a great source of inspiration to draw from». The artist arrived at painting after years of video-performance experiments in which he used to stage outsiders and the suburban poor in rough sets, making massive use of editing techniques and cosmetics. «The idea was to draw the spectator to the centre of the performance, creating a sort of quiet intensitythat gradually gave way to melancholy», he continues. For this reason, despite the editing, his characters appear realistic and apparently far removed from the abstract art of recent times. And yet there is a common denominator.
For not only has the artist shortened his name to ?TV?, but he also constantly refers to pop culture, both in terms of content (eg. Rambo) and through the titles (eg. Bret Easton Ellis).
The exhibition at the Campbelltown Art Centre, entitled ?TV Moore rum jungle?, is a so called mid-career retrospective and offers the artist the possibility of «creating a link between projects of the past and new ideas». Although living in another country, ?TV? is proud to be celebrated at home. «It?s gratifying being able to exhibit one?s work in the best possible conditions ». This Biennale shows there is growing interest in contemporary Australian art, but «I would like to see more philanthropy, more support for artists», he continues. «There?s a lot of water between Australia and the rest of the world, which is a sort of magic but which also makes some forms of exchange impracticable. Only Internet can help us».