Accompanying the text based artworks, and screening behind a sumptuous black curtain, is Special Effects, Dan Moynihan’s first major video work. It’s about Dan turning forty and it captures all the doubts, anxieties, questions and potential implosion that people often encounter on milestone birthdays.
‘It also,’ says Dan, ‘captures the loneliness of a person who books out an entire cinema for his birthday and chooses to go alone’.
The filming took place on the day of his birthday, Sunday the 28th of September 2014, at the Astor Theatre (soon to close down) in St Kilda. The dramatic curtain sectioning off the space in the exhibition came from the recently closed Greater Union cinema on Russell Street in Melbourne’s CBD.
Special Effects shows Dan Moynihan watching a movie in an empty cinema. The camera focus is entirely on Dan and his reactions to the movie he is watching. It captures in detail his responses to what is happening on screen but never do we see or know what he is watching.
This is Dan Moynihan’s first solo exhibition at Tolarno Galleries.
In 2009, as part of DAMP collective, Moynihan was included in The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at Queensland Art Gallery. Since then he has participated in a number of group exhibitions including NEW 11, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and My Land has Palm Trees, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, Croatia.
Recent solo exhibitions include Diplomatic Immunity, Oksasenkatu 11, Helsinki in 2011 and Lost in Space, a major installation at Gertrude Contemporary in 2013.
Born in 1974, Dan Moynihan undertook a Bachelor of Creative Arts from Wollongong University (2004) and lives and works in Melbourne. He was awarded the Australia Council Helsinki Studio in 2011 and the Australia Council Liverpool Studio in 2013. His work is held in the collection of the Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania and he is represented by Tolarno Galleries Melbourne.
All images courtesy of the Artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. Installation photography by Christian Capurro.
Press release courtesy Tolarno Galleries.