Catalogue > At random

Devon’s moors are the backdrop for this hybrid film that constructs an imaginary community and frames sentiments of belonging at a time when parochialism and nationalism are globally prevailing. Inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, Hipkins grafts portraits of his forebears across Devon?s uncanny landscapes. A subtext of Doyle’s classic novel negotiates yearnings for a homecoming and a mythical ancestral land.

Gavin Hipkins (b. 1968) is a New Zealand-based artist. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia. He is currently Associate Professor at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. His work explores the nation state, particularly in colonised countries in an era of re-imagined communities and ideas of social and political utopia. His recent moving image works engage film as a cinematic art that blurs conventional genres of essay film, documentary and experimental narrative structures. His work has been exhibited widely over the last two decades. His solo exhibition The Homely will open at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney in July 2020. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Videoex, Switzerland (2019); 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2018); International Film Festival Rotterdam (2018, 2015); International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (2017, 2016); The Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York (2014); City Art Centre, Edinburgh Art Festival (2014); Armory Film, New York (2012); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011); Austrian Museum of Applied Art and Contemporary Art (MAK), Vienna, (2011).