Australian Video Art Archive

Penelope Trotter

 

Club Visit

00:04:15 2008

Club Visit is a performance installation that explores current power relations between social groups in Australia. The main premise of the show is the concept of withheld knowledge as a tactic one social group may use to maintain a sense of power over another. The work focuses particularly on the current relevance of exclusive single sex clubs in Australia. A video details my fantasy and subsequent Surrealist performance of assuming the disguise of an aristocratic male and entering into the premises of an exclusive Melbourne club. The key agenda was to make it to the library in order to get a video of myself reading some feminist literature. A fantasy element was included in the performance and exhibition design to extend the experience of "unknowingness" created by the architecture of a club like this. We are left to question whether what we are viewing is real or not.

DVD available