PVOP:PROCESSION

'PVOP:PROCESSION' is an event based performative project that takes place inside The Ian Potter Centre National Gallery of Victoria. On a trolley 10 framed photographic works arrive in bubble wrap into the David McDiarmid Retrospective on level 3. 20 participants wear white gloves and hold an unwrapped photograph from the series Dark Rooms, together the participants weave through the galleries presenting photographs of Queer spaces to the public and stand in solidarity beside other works in the NGV until finally arriving on Flinders street to hold the work up to the public. Other artists who have produced events, processions and the participatory performance are Francis Alys, Tom Nicholson, Bianca Hester and Jeremy Deller. This work has become new knowledge in the field of fine art photography, performance and the event in a contemporary art context because it uses the framed image as an art object differently from the conventional photograph on the gallery wall. It reflects on religious rituals, processions, parades and political marches where the photograph is presented in the public space as a way to activate the history and narrative of the images presented, whilst celebrating the materiality of the frame and the photographic print by walking the object through the instituition. This is the first time that framed photographs are explicitly used to create a procession in The Ian Potter Centre National Gallery of Victoria and in the contemporary art context. http://nikpantaz.com/node/230