A MULTIMEDIA ART COLLECTIVE FINDS FAME ON TWO CONTINENTS
Keeping creative integrity does not necessarily mean sacrificing commercial success. Or vice versa. Just ask Gary Freedman and Jonathan Kneebone of Glue Society. With 10 members in New York and Sydney, the collective injects its work with a signature wit, whether the pieces are tactile or digital, commissioned or for their own amusement. “We set up as a group of creatives, and that has freed us from the delineation between art and commercial work,” explains Kneebone.
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Keeping creative integrity does not necessarily mean sacrificing commercial success. Or vice versa. Just ask Gary Freedman and Jonathan Kneebone of Glue Society. With 10 members in New York and Sydney, the collective injects its work with a signature wit, whether the pieces are tactile or digital, commissioned or for their own amusement. “We set up as a group of creatives, and that has freed us from the delineation between art and commercial work,” explains Kneebone.
Projects for clients such as Axe de-oderant (2009) and French channel Canal+ (2006) take Internet-style comedy and up the production values. Take their spoof of the nature doc March of the Penguins, which follows hundreds of human emperors through the Arctic, or their 2008 spot for 42 Below vodka in which explorers climb a snow-topped mountain to erect a rainbow of plastic chairs. The seating against the icy backdrop is more performance art than advertisement.
Now more than a decade old, they experiment in the romper room of pop cul-ture and digital technology. A TV pilot for Star Flat takes celebrity look-alikes such as “Prince” and “Tom Hanks” and imagines them sharing an apartment, while an Australian public service satire reveals the dangers of the country’s murder rates. Both capitalize on the YouTube-spawned desire to screen video art outside gallery walls.
The cadre’s newest venture, “God’s Eye View,” manipulates Google Earth photography to recreate Biblical moments from satellite views, including Noah’s ark and the parting of the Red Sea. The photos are then printed, back-lit and displayed flat to be viewed from above. For Kneebone, flexibility is key. “We aren’t good at defining ourselves. It’s not deliberate; it’s just served us well to be open-minded.” Treating both TV promos and exhibitions as serious—and seriously clever—endeavors make each medium worth watching. gluesociety.com
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