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MAR24             FORWARD, BACKWARD Sofie McClure

Compiling video and sound from various modes of transport and travel, Forward, Backward is a study of movement. Placed in the centre of the installation, the viewer is immersed in a perpetual state of transit, disoriented by the physical act of turning back and forward. Evoking the feeling of looking out of a window of a moving vehicle, the work is a blur until something catches your eye, coming into focus before slipping away. Intercutting the videos of transit are birds in flight, propelled forward by a path invisible to the human eye. Drawing into relief the complexities of human movement across land and water, Forward, Backward looks to the birds for direction.

Collaborating with sound artist Josh Peters, the work is a spatial sound experience, interweaving sound works made by Rebecca Bracewell, Andrew Wear, Felix Adsett and Xavier Wear Gardener.


Sofie McClure is a video artist interested in film not merely as a visual medium, but as an embodied, multi-sensory practice. Viewing the camera as a receptor to a world inaccessible to the human eye, her work operates at the level of bodily memory and sensory experience that exceeds cognitive or visual capacities. For this work she developed new techniques in re-shooting footage, placing the materiality of the work within an ongoing cycle of deterioration and regeneration. Sofie’s a member of Naarm-based film collective Dogmilk, her work has been shown at galleries and festivals, including Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, 138 gallery, Milk Gallery, the St Kilda Film Festival and the Signal Building.