| Description |
1 online resource (streaming video file) (27 min. 55 sec.) ; 166875905 bytes |
| Summary |
Spanning a career of almost 20 years, artist Lisa Roet has made the plight of chimpanzees the subject of her life's work. Her passionate investigation of primates has seen her producing artworks in mediums as diverse as sculpture, photography, video art, stained glass, screen printing, drawing and painting. Filmed in the 150th anniversary year of Charles Darwin's revolutionary book On the Origin of Species, this film traces some remarkable up-close-and-personal experiences Roet has had observing primates at circuses, zoos, ape research centres and in the jungles of Borneo and Malaysia. Through artworks both major and whimsical, Roet ventures where others fear to tread, even exploring sexuality between humans and our hairy cousins. "I have had weird questions from people - 'do I have romantic inclinations towards apes?'... No, I don't! I don't have sexual fantasies about apes," Roet assures us.Artscape follows the artist as she creates her most ambitious work yet - a huge, three-metre high, one-tonne bronze cast to honour a very particular chimp. "While I was working at the Antwerp Zoo (Belgium) on a series called Ape and The Bunnyman, I concentrated on one particular chimp. Several months after this body of work was completed I received a phone call from a taxidermist who asked me to visit his studio as he had something to show me. He had been asked to stuff a chimpanzee that had died at the Antwerp Zoo to be placed in the Brussels Museum. He pulled the dead chimpanzee from the freezer - at this moment I recognised it as being the chimp I had worked with for Ape and The Bunnyman. I decided to immortalise this chimp by making a death mask of it. Turning this into a Roman scholarly-type bust I created a mould which I've since reworked many times over to produce many different types of chimp busts, but this huge bronze bust is the most challenging yet," says Roet.PRODUCTION DETAILS:Artscape is produced by ABC TV. ABC Head of Arts & Entertainment: Amanda Duthie; Executive Producer: Greg Dee; Series Producer: Karen Leng; Director Klaus Toft |
| Notes |
Closed captioning in English |
| Event |
Broadcast 2010-04-20 at 22:05:00 |
| Notes |
Classification: PG |
| Subject |
Apes in art.
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Art, Australian -- Exhibitions.
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Artists -- Interviews.
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Chimpanzees in art.
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Sculpture, Australian.
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Australia.
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| Form |
Streaming video
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| Author |
Ridgway, Charlie, contributor
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Roet, Lisa, contributor
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Toft, Klaus, director
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Woodbury, Karen, contributor
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