Oh Industry (2009)
image courtesy Daniel Mudie Cunningham
Oh Industry was filmed during an artist residency at Newington Armory and mashes popular culture depictions of naval, military and factory labour with the amusements and distractions of early 20th century modern life…
Bette Midler’s performance of the song ‘Oh Industry’ from Beaches (1988) and references to the popular motion picture serial The Perils of Pauline (1914) intersect with conveyor belt choreography to suggest how the machine age and its class structures were shaped during the rise of modernity and industrialisation.
Primarily working with video, performance and installation, Cunningham’s work draws upon and re-imagines the vernacular image streams of everyday life and its connection to the past through the use of found photographs, video, music and text. Bec Dean, Associate Director at Performance Space, Sydney wrote in Real Time (issue 93): “Daniel Mudie Cunningham is an artist whose practice operates at a sometimes dazzling intersection between popular culture, performance art and fandom”.
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