KLEX 2012 Feature Artist : Richard Tuohy

Richard Tuohy (Australia)

In the late 1980s and early 1990s Richard Tuohy was an active member of the Melbourne Super 8 Film Group.  He suspended his work in film for several years, studying philosophy, music and botany, before returning to the medium in 2005.  Since then he
has created almost 40 films, first on Super 8 and more recently
on 16mm. His films have screened at venues including the Melbourne IFF, EMAF (Osnabruck), Rotterdam IFF, and Media City,
and in 2011 a program of his work toured Europe at venues in Vienna, Paris, Berlin, London and Leeds.   In 2009 his film Iron-Wood won first prize (ex aequo) at Abstracta (Rome). His films are part of the ‘hand-made’ film tradition. His films to date have shown two principal concerns: a fascination with abstractions from nature and with the materialist film tradition.  His films are typically highly structured and formalist.  As well as running the only lab for small gauge film in Australia – the artist-run lab nanolab – Richard was also one of the founding directors of the Australian International Experimental Film Festival.

Richard Tuohy Solo Programme

Total Run Time: 57 min

Iron-wood
(16mm,, 7 minutes, 2009)
Iron-wood is an abstract visual exploration of the deeply fissured ‘cog-like’ bark of the Australian tree Eucalyptus Sideroxylon – Red Ironbark.

Etienne’s Hand
(16mm, 13 minutes, 2011)
A movement study of a restless hand.  Made from one five second shot.  Sound constructed from an old French folk tune played on a hand cranked music box.

Tasmanian Splintering
(16mm, 14 minutes, 2011)
Bones of a dead Tasmanian forest colourfully ‘ re-animated’ in a film printer.

Seoul Electric
(16mm, 7 minutes, 2012)
A North Asian metropolis.  Electricity wires draped like thick webs adorn the streetscape. Expolsive sparks of colour electrify the frame.
Filmed in Seoul in black and white.  Colourised during processing using coloured torch light.

Screen Tone
(16 mm, 16 minutes , 2012)
Half-tone dot ‘screens’ intended for use as shadings and tones in Manga comic illustrations have here been ‘photogrammed’ directly onto raw 16mm film stock.  A flicker collage of these dots has then been created using a16mm film printer.   The sounds heard are those that the dots themselves produce as they pass the optical sound head of the 16mm projector.  This is a camera-less and sound-recorder-less film!