JIM ALLEN

Michael Lett is pleased to present Jim Allen's News, first performed at The Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide in 1976. The work plays on the ritualistic activity of engaging with 'the news', highlighting the expendability of a newspaper and its content and the frustration at its inevitable sensationalism and tragedy. Some thirty years since its initial presentation the reading, both literally and figuratively, of the work becomes more pertinent given our increasingly fleeting and facile consumption of information.

The work has recently been documented on film, in a single take of Allen's own performance. The exhibition will also include a live performance of News, further details of which will be announced in due course.

Jim Allen (b. 1922, Wellington) has been developing his artistic practice since the 1950s and was at the forefront of the development of post-object and performance-based art in Australasia. He was among the early exhibitors at the Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, South Australia and Founding Head of the Art School at Sydney College of the Arts (which later became Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney). Since 2000 Allen has re-staged a number of early works, such as the two-part installation O-AR (1974) and the early performances Contact (1974), Poetry for Chainsaws (1976), News (1976) and On Planting a Native (1976) in Adelaide, Sydney, Auckland, New Plymouth and Wellington. His video works have been shown widely in America, Germany and the Netherlands.