Above Image:
”Spirit Highway”
17 February - 3 April 2022
AV Gallery
Book Launch on 26 March
Countdown Mountain explores sprawling Tāmaki Makaurau over a 'lost year', 2021. Short video monologues, recorded by a wanderer, are alphabetically indexed as a quasi-encyclopaedia. In keeping with the etymological meaning of that word, “encyclopaedia”, this is a work that walks us around in circles. The entries reimagine the mundane world, subjecting it to ultramundane interpretations that can be dark, lyrical, or hilarious. Whether one views a single clip, or watches them all, the imagination gets to stretch its legs.
“It takes a special eye to see a mythological landscape beneath our everyday surroundings. Gabriel White has this eye. ”
— Richard von Sturmer
Biography
Gabriel White is a filmmaker and musician from Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, Aotearoa.
In the 1990s, he was a student in the Intermedia department at Elam School of Fine Arts, headed by Phil Dadson. While at Elam, White was a member of an experimental music group, Spacesuit, and over the past half decade has produced several albums and theatrical works with Richard von Sturmer as The Floral Clocks.
White has published photography, poetry and essays in several publications including Landfall NZ. His feature film Oracle Drive (2013) premiered at the NZIFF 2013 and has been profiled on the documentary Out of the Mist. Another short film is Around the Margins (2016).
Selected video works are available online at Circuit Aotearoa.
