I've long been a fan of immersive art: the kind of installations that surround you, often plunging the viewer into darkness so that all other senses are wiped out except the ones the artist wants you to use. Usually visual, frequently auditory, not often anything else, admittedly.

The finest example I've come across was at the Tate Modern some years ago, an installation called 'Five Angels for the Millennium', by Bill Viola. The audience entered a pitch black room where apart from the dull glow of lights beyond the exits, all that could be seen were two and a half metre screens, three on the wall in front and two behind. And on each screen a different angel. Videos of people in soft, voluminous clothes falling through water. It was a simple enough process: film people diving into a pool & then play it on half-speed, with the soft sound of bubbles and dives numbing the senses of the audience, slowing everything down. The most effective tableaus were the ones where the angels fell up -- the video played upside down, still with its water and slo-mo, but suddenly taking on a new meaning. It was a trick. It was embarrassingly effective.

It was – as I've always said art should be – beautiful. It awoke a childish awe in me that I've been looking to relive ever since.

'When I showed the finished work to Kira [Perov], my partner, she pointed out something I had not realised until that moment: this was not a film of a drowning man. Somehow, I had unconsciously run time backwards in the five films, so all but one of the figures rush upwards and out of the water. I had inadvertently created images of ascension, from death to birth.'
-- Bill Viola

So it was I went along to the Art Gallery of NSW last night, intrigued by the promise of Struck, by Michele Barker and Anna Munster. Struck finishes today, so the link won't work by tomorrow. ( Struck is … )

Dissatisfied, I wandered over to the Archibalds, which were busy screaming Art with a Capital A. (  By god, is it possible that so very many paintings are completed each year with so very much Importance attached to them? )

Well, that's enough rambling from me.