Et Phone Home

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday March 16, 2007

Tracey Clement.

Olaf Breuning has fun with our favourite alien on DVD. By Tracey Clement.

If home is really where your heart is, then Olaf Breuning likes to share the love around.

For his manic double DVD, Home, which screens simultaneously on two displays, Breuning and his crazed cast travelled all over the world. From Caribbean islands and ancient ruins in Peru to a council estate in Manchester and the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, Home schizophrenically jump-cuts through locations that are exotic, banal or dripping with kitsch glamour.

This mind-boggling tour de force is the centrepiece of the Swiss artist's mixed-media solo show of the same name. Entering the gallery you stumble into a darkened room, filled with

life-sized, sheet-wearing ghosts. These low-budget ghouls were extras in Home. Breuning's 30-minute DVD is part reality TV and part travel show, with a large dose of B-grade zombie flick thrown in for extra spice.

On the right screen, in black and white, New York writer Brian Kerstetter narrates in his undies, looking as if he's away with the fairies. His wild stories are played out in colour on the other side. A family belts out heavy metal tunes and plays air guitar in the lounge room. A straight couple, stranded on a desert island, grow long beards.

In one bizarre scenario, Kerstetter and his hardcore homies, who resemble rejects from Michael Jackson's '80s video Thriller, drive through scenic Pennsylvania. They capture a young Amish man and force him to cavort naked through the green fields in a rubber ET mask. Like Spielberg's cute little alien, the poor technophobe could use a phone.

HOME

Australian Centre for Photography,

257 Oxford Street, Paddington,

9332 1455, Tue-Sun, until April 14.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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