LAITH MCGREGOR
SQUARE2 ARCHIVE
LAITH MCGREGOR
8 February – 7 March 2010
Maturing 2007
Matured 2009
DVD
Duration: 30 minutes / 32minutes: 34 seconds, both looped
Courtesy the artist and Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney.
Laith McGregor is often present in his own film works. These are typically less of a performance, more a sustained effort to accomplish a task, or simply pass time. The artist seems intent on amusing himself, without regard for the possible presence of observers, and it’s hard not to find yourself laughing aloud in unasked response to his antics. While they are evidently staged quite deliberately for the camera, the experience of watching these films is not unlike catching an actor’s warm-up out of the corner of one eye, or being privy to someone’s private face-making session in the bathroom.
Two works by McGregor feature in Square2. In Maturing (2007) he sits before a camera for a 30 minute period, passing the time by pulling absurd faces, and eventually taking a marker pen to his face to add a layer of facial hair which ultimately obscures his whole face. Matured (2009) finds the artist again altering his facial appearance; this time dual images show him alternately shaving his face, and sticking the hair to his forehead. In both works the artist seems completely involved in completing his illogical task, playing up to the potential absurdity inherent in masculine rituals. It’s his remarkable composure while enacting this farce, as much as his actions, that we find ourselves watching.
Laith McGregor is better known for his drawing practice. His elaborate biro pen illustrations are portraits slightly off kilter, where scale or reflection is used to distort an otherwise meticulous likeness. Since graduating with a Bachelor in Fine Art from the Victorian College of Art in 2007, the Melbourne-based artist has shown widely, and last year received the Australian Council for the Arts Emerging Artist grant, and the Qantas Foundation for the Encouragement of Australian Contemporary Art Award. In 2009 his work was included in Too Much of Me: 7 Paths through the Absurd, (with detour)*, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, and I Walk the Line, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney NSW. McGregor is represented by Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art, Sydney (http://www.ssfa.com.au/artists/78/).