Earth Message

It's a three-colour separation study of MacKenzie Falls in the Grampians, Victoria.

Ayers Rock is examined in the light of its ancient human and animal associations. It is seen under various light effects which create different colour and texture impressions. The timelessness of the monolith is suggested by negative colour, the result of using fine-grain Eastmancolour print stock in the camera, a slow speed material which required the intense Central Australian light for adequate exposure. A half-speed recording of the local bird call and insects contributes to the sense of cross eras. Human perception of time, colour and sound is questioned. As Einstein said: 'The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.'

Timeless elements in a roll of film: stillness, movement, woman, girl, road, wind, sun, leaves. A triptych of a girl who reminds us of the face and figures in old icons.

A short animation of Charles Lloyd’s dry points. Sound composition by Arthur Cantrill.

A camera calligraphy of the coastal bush -- celebrating growth, summer light, rock and plant textures.

Will Spoor is a Dutch performer, working in the abstract side of movement and mime. He has considerable knowledge of the potential of film and his intention was to extend his work into realms that were impossible for live theatre. We used a combination of animation and in-camera superimpositions to create structures of body movement. Our work on sound composition came to a head in this film with organically and electronically complex sounds. It was the most valuable collaboration we had done with another artist since Larry Sitsky; an intense concentration of our energies and skills and of his energies and skills. (Arthur Cantrill & Corinne Cantrill)

TWO WOMEN records our passage through the tribal lands of the Central Australian region – a personal charting of this mythical landscape. The film is shaped by an unedited recording made of a Pitjantjatjara women’s song cycle: "Two Women", which describes the travels of ancestral women through this region. The film is not a literal interpretation of the song story, and there is no translation of the song. We are outsiders to this culture, and must therefore learn what we can from the ‚surface’ of the song cycle – from the voices singing, talking, whispering, coughing, laughing, reprimanding children.

Experimental Super 8 film from 2001 by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill

Hand-drawn directly onto 16mm film, this animation is a 'diary' of daily drawing-on-film practice by Ivor Cantrill over a period of 18 months. Drawing style ranges from bold geometric patterns, to a delicate calligraphy.

An experimental work about the Australian forests by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill.

"Island Fuse consists entirely of the monochromatic reprocessing of black and white footage that we filmed in the 1960s on the Isle of Stradbroke. Using an analysis projector, Island Fuse is a film that focuses on the interaction of the elements that produced the film: the analysis projector, the camera and its various mechanisms; filters, the projector and its mechanisms; the ribbon and the photograms; the operators."

Evening performances of traditional Balinese dance-drama in Ubud, shot single frame with open shutter exposures.

short experimental film by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill

Three-color separation imagery expands the experimental documentation of landscape. Alternating nuances of color conjure up; a formal beauty, which are echoed in birdsong and the buzzing of insects.

At Black Range (1984) was shot near the Grampians in Western Victoria, and features monumental monochrome rocks with rainbow shadows and “fringing” in the moving eucalypts, which create coloured vibrations like the filmic analogue of Impressionism. The skin of the film and the rock itself are both living surfaces of mobile textures: lichen becomes electric, pointilist, as the camera fades in and out of focus. The shadows of skinny tree trunks dart like electric blue lightning, veins or eels. Shivering leaves morph into undersea anemones, caressing the rocks in a teasing, sexual way. Somehow, the loosening of Taussig’s “straightjacket of the spectrum” allows for a loosening of the straightjacket of taxonomy as well; classes, phyla, and even kingdoms drop away, revealing an undifferentiated field of vibrant matter in which entities shapeshift. (Tessa Laird)

Part of a series of four studies the Cantrills made of the native flora of the Stradford Island, this one focusing on the Casuarina Equisetifolia.