Daniel Mudie Cunningham





			Artist Oh Industry (2009) The Jodie Foster Archive (2009) Jodie Foster Sex Montage (2008) The Pornography of Romance (2007) Lust in the Fastlane (2007) Take the L (2007) Proud Mary (2007) Funeral Songs (2007) Repeats (2000) The Ballad of Technological Dependency (1998) The Den (1998) Fucking Jodie Foster (1996) Licycle (1995) Gender is a Drag (1993) Troll (1993)









	OH INDUSTRY Exhibited in Oh Industry, MOP Projects, 23 July - 9 August 2009 Exhibited in The Armory Exhibition 2009, curated by Mimi Kelly, The Armory Gallery, Newington Armory, 27 June - 27 September 2009 Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Oh Industry, 2009, HDV video, 16:9, 4 min 11 sec. Production still: Pete Volich. Filmed at Newington Armory, Oh Industry, 2009, mashes popular culture depictions of factory, military and naval labour with the amusements and distractions of early 20th century modern life. Bette Midler’s performance of the song ‘Oh Industry’ from the film Beaches (1988) and the popular film 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. Conceived & Performed by Daniel Mudie Cunningham Dancers: Elizabeth Ryan, Emma Saunders, Mirabelle Wouters Choreography: Emma Saunders Director of Photography: Don Cameron Editor: Vera Hong Stills Photography: Pete Volich Production Assistant: David Wheeler Wardrobe: Catherine White, Jessica Olivieri Music: ‘Oh Industry’, vocals: Bette Midler, songwriter: Wendy Waldman, from Beaches Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Atlantic Records, 1988 Closed session performance at Newington Armory, NSW, 24 April 2009 Download the catalogue THE JODIE FOSTER ARCHIVE Exhibited as part of Oh Industry, MOP Projects, 23 July - 9 August 2009 Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Meeting Jodie Foster, 2001/2009, snapshot taken on disposable Kodak camera at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, New York, printed on PVC. Daniel Mudie Cunningham’s The Jodie Foster Archive is a body of performance and video works produced between 1996 and 2008 that gauge the actor’s sexual and political significance within contemporary culture. Playing upon the appeal and anxieties of her onscreen personas and personal life — Foster has become a contested object of lesbian, feminist and straight desire and an ambivalent image of gender in mainstream cinema — Cunningham’s work takes pleasure in the sometimes oppositional points of reception and identification in queer readings of popular culture” - Jose Da Silva, catalogue essay extract. Download the catalogue JODIE FOSTER SEX MONTAGE Bent Western: Live on Stage Blacktown Arts Centre, 12 April 2008 Daniel Mudie Cunningham featuring Anastasia Zaravinos, Jodie Foster Sex Montage, performance and screen montage backdrop. Photo: David Silva In 1996 I performed Fucking Jodie Foster, which was a satirical response to the gay politics of ‘outing’ celebrities who for whatever reason stay closeted. The sequel, Jodie Foster Sex Montage, performed in 1998, occurred not long after I found out Jodie Foster had publicly declared her homosexuality. The performance took place against a screen montage of stills from Jodie’s heterosexual sex scenes. The montage was set to a disco song that Jodie recorded in 1977 called “La Vie C'est Chouette”. I played pinball dressed as Jodie in Taxi Driver. Dressed as a butch dyke, performance artist Anastasia Zaravinos rapes me like we just stepped into a scene from The Accused. True to The Accused, the audience laughed and cheered us on, as I hoped they would. LUST IN THE FAST LANE Smash Hits, curated by Tom Polo Parramatta Artist Studios, December 2007 – January 2008 Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Lust in the Fastlane, 2007, acrylic on board. Photo: Tom Polo For Smash Hits curator Tom Polo provided artists with a 12 inch LP sized board to recreate their Best or Worst Moment of 2007 – like it was a design for a compilation album. As I spent a lot of time driving in 2007 – at the time I lived 95 km from where I work – I made Lust in the Fast Lane, a painting about how my worst moments were spent driving my crappy but reliable car. Optimistically, the work was also about how my best moment of 2007 was entertaining fantasies involving a new expensive red sports car. This text and image was appropriated from the video artwork of the 1984 porn flick Lust in the Fast Lane starring the notorious Traci Lords. THE PORNOGRAPHY OF ROMANCE Runway, Issue 10: Romance Left: Daniel Mudie Cunningham, You’ve Got AIDS (Sleepless in Philadelphia), 2007, digital image Right: Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Bareback Hero, 2007, digital image For the “Romance” issue of the art magazine Runway, I contributed an essay about the construction of romance in cinema as a kind of emotional pornography. I produced these digital images specifically for the article. TAKE THE L Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, December 2007 watch Take the L at YouTube This art video was made in November 2007 and is set to 'Take the L' by The Motels (1982). Take the L was commissioned by Australian performance artists The Motel Sisters for their exhibition Becos I'm Worf It, Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, Melbourne. PROUD MARY Exhibited in Funeral Songs, MOP Projects, December 2007 Exhibited in Stupid Little Dreamer, Inflight, Hobart, October 2008 I chose Tina Turner’s version of “Proud Mary” as my funeral song as I have a reputation amongst friends for breaking out into Tina dance moves whenever it comes on (this usually happens under the influence of alcohol). For my Funeral Songs installation, I exhibited everyone’s funeral music in a jukebox, but my chosen song was shown as a “music video” to showcase these famous dance moves. Proud Mary was filmed and edited by Sari TM Kivinen and will feature in series two of Andrew Frost’s series The Art Life (ABC TV, 2009). Download the Stupid Little Dreamer catalogue Watch Proud Mary at YouTube FUNERAL SONGS MOP Projects, December 2007 Image: Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Porcelain, 1985 / 2007 What song do you want played at your funeral? Daniel Mudie Cunningham has been asking that question of artists and artworkers throughout 2007. Over 150 people answered it in all manner of ways that ranged from the profound to the playful. Some of the songs selected deliberately tug at the heartstrings, while others make you want to drop everything and dance. The idea for Funeral Songs is based in personal experience. Weeks before the artist’s brother unexpectedly died in 2001, he’d mentioned what song should be played at his funeral. Amid the grief, the song choice was forgotten. Now recalled several years on, the song features in Cunningham’s curated readymade archive of music you can live or die to. This project was supported by a grant from the NSW Government – Arts NSW, through a program administered by the National Association for the Visual Arts download catalogue read the Funeral Songs blog back to top REPEATS Directed by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, 2000 Deborah Mailman in Repeats “This short is an example of what can be done when an idea is executed with style and panache… I eagerly await Daniel’s next film. Maybe a longer one for us fans”. — Gerard Alexander, Shock Cinema, No. 17, 2000 Repeats is a video that incorporates a soundtrack of answering machine messages, each one accompanied by a sequence of stylised photographic stills that unfold like a storyboard. Each sequence features the person who left the voice message in scenarios that reference films like La Jetee and Blow Up. Repeats features Deborah Mailman, William Yang, Julianne Pierce and Victoria Spence, among many others. Repeats is the sequel to The Ballad of Technological Dependency and was exhibited as part of the installation The Den in Home Sweet Homo at Raw Nerve Gallery and at the Celluloid Salon, Dendy Cinema, Martin Place. THE BALLAD OF TECHNOLOGICAL DEPENDENCY Directed by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, 1998 The Ballad of Technological Dependency was the first slideshow video work I made which featured sequences of stills of friends set to answering machine messages they had left me during 1997. Before I made the video, I “performed” this as a live slide show with the answering machine soundtrack at Club Bent at Performance Space. Midway through a junkie in the audience yelled out that it was “fucking pretentious”. The title references Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. THE DEN Daniel Mudie Cunningham, 1998 Raw Nerve Gallery The Den is an installation that links narratives of fact and fiction, threads of memory and community. The modern man of twentieth century sitcoms always retreats to his den in the evening, after a meal and before a fuck. The den is a masculine space of hero worship. Its contents are chains of memory, threads of desire. Photos, certificates and souvenirs trace familial ties and reinforce identity. What if the memories are stolen or borrowed from others? What happens when memory is taken out of its quotidian context and transformed into art world glamour? See Home Sweet Homo FUCKING JODIE FOSTER Performed at Club Bent Performance Space, Sydney February 1996 Was it true, was Jodie coming out? Was she finally making a commitment to the cause? Written and performed by Daniel Mudie Cunningham Download Review LICYCLE Performed at Club Bent Performance Space, Sydney February 1995 “I love you, no I don’t” said Liza as she got off her bicycle and rode into the sunset. Liza was once more seen riding the trail of love. THE END" Written and Performed by Daniel Mudie Cunningham GENDER IS A DRAG Performed at the University of Western Sydney November 1993 “Look, if I used to love you, it was because of your hair; now that you’re shorn I don’t love you anymore” Self-portrait with Cropped Hair, Frida Kahlo, 1940. Written and Performed by Daniel Mudie Cunningham TROLL Chauvel Cinema, 1993 In 1993, I was invited to be in a video art exhibition Honey at the Chauvel Cinema. I had never made videos before so it came as a surprise to be invited. I made a video about a woman in a fur coat who flees a shopping centre car park in an orange Datsun after being attacked by several shopping trollies. Part of it is set to The Sugarcubes song “Petrol”.