Shaun Gladwell

Maddestmaximvs: Planet & Stars Sequence is artist Shaun Gladwell’s contribution to the 2009 Venice Biennale. Gladwell’s work engages his own experiences in Australia’s landscape, and both his interest in extreme sports and Mad Max movies. His work engages these subjects through performance, video, painting, and sculpture.

Shaun Gladwell is one of Australia’s most prominent new artists. His already celebrated video works focus upon figures engaged in performative actions that articulate relationships with their immediate environment, whether in Sydney, Tokyo or Sao Paulo. In Gladwell’s practice video acts as an inherently concentrated mode of looking at, intervening in and shaping the world, critically engaging personal experience as well as speculating more widely upon art history and the dynamics of contemporary culture. This book is the first major publication on Shaun Gladwell’s practice. It features documentation of almost thirty works in video produced over an eight-year period from 2000, an extended essay by Blair French (Executive Director, Artspace Visual Arts Centre), further contributions by Iain Borden (Professor of Architecture and Urban Culture, The Bartlett Institute, University College, London) and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (Chief Curator, Castello di Rivoli, Turin and Artistic Director, 2008 Biennale of Sydney), along with an interview with the artist by independent curator and writer Ihor Holubizky.