Shaun Gladwell: Pacific Undertow

Shaun Gladwell: Pacific Undertow will be the largest survey exhibition to date of the work of Australian artist Shaun Gladwell, best known for his videos representing the body in motion.

From early paintings and the renowned video Storm Sequence, 2000, through to newly commissioned augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) works, Pacific Undertow spans two decades of the artist’s practice. It brings together different media to trace Gladwell’s obsessions with colonial and art histories, forms of everyday urban performance, and mortality.

The exhibition title, Pacific Undertow, is taken from a pivotal video piece. It resonates with a sense of elemental forces, motion and the heft of gravity: key principles that inform Gladwell’s work.

From drawing to VR, from scrutinising marks made by the hand of the artist to the viewer’s complete immersion in an imaginary world, Shaun Gladwell: Pacific Undertow is the artist’s explorative journey through the technological possibilities of 21st-century art.