Agility Drill

BACKGROUND In her high definition video work 'Agility Drill' Kosloff pays homage to the slapstick routines of Buster Keaton and the stop-frame photographic sequences produced by Eadweard Muybridge in the late 19th century. The work builds on these traditions, using gestural performance to explore the body as subject and object in art. CONTRIBUTION Agility Drill consists of a performative action whereby the artist leads an amateur actor over and across a series of sporting hurdles. The video has an out of synch quality, appearing to be abstracted from real time and routine practice, so as to focus more intently on embodied experiences. Echoing the early stop-frame photographic sequences, Kosloff fractures movement, making the viewer more conscious of the human form in relation to space, and the way our minds and bodies are required to work in unison, to analyse human interconnectedness and fallibility. SIGNIFICANCE The Chartwell Collection, the largest private art collection in New Zealand that is held on long term loan by the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased Agility Drill in 2011. In 2012, Auckland Art Gallery curator Natasha Conland chose Agility Drill for inclusion in an exhibition of Chartwell Collection works that explore ideas of 'action' and the ways in which artists create situations of meaning and response through their work. This curated exhibition was well patronised and Agility Drill featured in the 144 page catalogue that featured essays by leading art writers Natasha Conland, David Cross and Daniel Malone.