Channels and Spells surveys the important role Performance Space has played in supporting and presenting innovative film and video work throughout its 40-year history. Taking cues from Video Spell, a four-part exhibition series curated by Blair French during 2003–04 at PSpace, Channels and Spells engages with diverse approaches to the performative in video work. 

Fourteen single-channel videos cast an archival spell as they are carefully selected to preserve and evoke the essence of the past. Changing thematic preoccupations are traced alongside an evolution of the analogue-to-digital technologies used over time. Shifting perspectives on identity politics, the body, language, time, and place are animated through performance and persona and writ large through projection and screen. Curated by Daniel Mudie Cunningham to evoke an immersive atmosphere composed from the fragments of their originating video performance installations, Channels and Spells offers a strange and otherworldly experience that still feels familiar; a vestige of this world and of our shared history.

Artists:
Stephen Cummins
Peter Callas
Randelli
Derek Kreckler
John Gillies & Sydney Front
Eugenia Raskopoulos
Adrienne Doig
Tracey Moffatt
Denis Beaubois
Ronnie van Hout
Tony Schwensen
Monika Tichacek & Emma Price
r e a
Salote Tawale