Alexis Destoop (Sydney & Brussels)

Phantom Sun

Performative Reading

Synopsis: Built from an extensive personal archive over multiple trips and expeditions, Destoop presents on his recent monumental video installation reconfiguring the history of the Russian-Norwegian borderland in the European High North. The work re-imagines this desolate geographic landscape through a poetic reappropriation, portraying a zone where past and future are confounded. Marked by the worldly conflicts of the 20th century, this region is directly undergoing the effects of climate change, while featuring prominently on the geopolitical chessboard of a recent Northward expansion. This ghostly stasis leaves everything in a state of expectation, while the references to unnamed conflicts suggest the possibility of a catastrophic past.

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Bio: The Belgian-born Australian artist Alexis Destoop forms an ongoing investigation into the workings of the image. His multilayered constructions in photography, installation and film examine the component elements of storytelling, the experience of time and the processes of identification and memory. Appropriating visual archetypes and genre conventions, his work questions, reconfigures and short-circuits the acquired meanings associated with them. His practice originates from photography and is influenced by his experience in the performing arts as well as his studies in philosophy. Destoop has presented major installations at All Our Relations, 18th Sydney Biennale, AGNSW, Performance Space at CARRIAGEWORKS, ARGOS Centre for Media Art, Brussels, Galeria Continua, Italy, SMAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Gent, Belgium, Museum of Contemporary Art (MARTa), Hertford, Germany, Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France and Seattle Art Fair, USA. Public collections include ARGOS, Centre for Media Art, Brussels and the National Bank of Belgium Collection amongst private collections in Europe, US and Australia.