The Gallery A Years

Peter Kennedy is at the forefront of Australian conceptual art. A founding member of the Sydney artist-run initiative Inhibodress in the early 1970s, his artistic practice has been informed by a deeply reflective critique of the politics and history of modernity. His pioneering body of work embraces installation, performance, sound, video and more recently, photography, watercolour and drawing. From the late 1960s Kennedy began to create minimalist works in neon light whilst employed at the signage company Claude Neon. He was one of the first Australian artists to work with this medium. He went on to create experimental performance and sound works, and by the late 1970s had developed an art practice that was politically engaged. The film 'The Gallery A Years' 1970-2009 is a single channel, media-based work that documents two early exhibitions of Kennedy's light works at Gallery A. The work builds upon archival material 'rediscovered' by curator John Murphy in 2009. Using digital scans of both film and still images, Kennedy reconfigured the 1970-71 exhibitions into a new work. The film reveals the robust experimentalism of Kennedy's practice, with its exploration of luminal colour and time-based elements.