Artist Shaun Gladwell was the guest of Outset Bialik Residency during October-November 2017, for the installation of his solo exhibition “1,000 Horses” at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, curated by Ruti Director.
Shaun Gladwell’s project “1,000 Horses” referenced a historic event that took place one hundred years ago, connecting Israeli history to the history of Australia: The Battle of Beersheba of 31 October 1917, in which the 4th and 12th Australian Light Horse Brigades, fighting with the Allied Forces, defeated the forces of the Ottoman Empire. The outcome of this battle – the British rule of Palestine – was to affect political reality of the region for years to come. It is also considered the last important battle to actively involve mounted infantry.
Shaun Gladwell’s works focus not on the battle but on its less central protagonists – the horses. Gladwell has had a longstanding interest in the horse as a historical and cultural image and in the ways by which it is connected to myths of war, heroism and masculinity. An early performance and video work of his was inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Riding with Death (1988), in which the horse and its rider are depicted as skeletons. He has also engaged in a variety of modern horse substitutes, such as the skateboard, bicycle and motorbike, and the risk of death involved in riding them.
The works on view at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art were based on photographs taken in Australia and at the Negev Desert in Israel, featuring the horse’s life-cycle from birth to old age. Like the horses that took part in the Battle of Beersheba a century years ago, brought over from Australia with the soldiers after they had been trained in the Australian desert for the climate conditions prevailing in Asia and Africa, the protagonist of Gladwell’s works was a Waler horse, albeit one born in the Negev Desert. It was depicted alongside and within the monuments erected in its memory. The photographs were screened as videos and through virtual-reality glasses. In addition, the exhibition featured a 3-D print of a Roman horse-and-rider sculpture, both somewhat damaged. Shifting one’s perspective from man to horse provokes thought about wider issues such as man’s relationship with nature, which runs the gamut from exploitation and domestication to empathy and admiration.
ON VIEW: 2nd November 2017 ?- ?7th April 2018
Shaun Gladwell (b. 1972, Sydney, Australia) currently lives in London. He received his B.A. from Sydney University’s Sydney College of the Arts and his M.A. from University of New South Wales’ College of Fine Arts. He continued his studies at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In 2009 he travelled to Afghanistan as the Australian War Memorial’s Official War Artist. Gladwell has exhibited at the Venice Biennale twice; in 2007 he exhibited in the international exhibition at the 52nd Biennale, (curated by Robert Storr), and in 2009 at the 53rd Biennale, he represented Australia at the national pavilion, with his exhibition MADDESTMAXIMVS: Planet and Stars Sequence. In 2016, his video work Skateboarders VS Minimalism was commissioned for the 40th Anniversary of the Sydney Festival. Also in 2016, Gladwell co-founded BADFAITH, a virtual reality content collective with producer Leo Faber.
His works include a range of mediums from photography, painting, sculpture and video art to installation, performance and virtual reality.
