Shaun Gladwell

The project was commissioned for the 40th Anniversary of the Sydney Festival and illustrates the artist's interest in juxtaposing popular sports culture with art history and museum culture.

The video features skateboarders (including professional Rodney Mullen) riding on exact replicas of well known minimalist artworks.

The soundtrack for this video features the music of Philip Glass.

Regarding this work, Gladwell has stated that he was inspired by the seminal Australian surf film Morning of the Earth (1971).

The video used a cast of performers that were both professional dancers and surfers.

Shaun Gladwell (born 1972) is an Australian contemporary artist whose work spans moving image, painting, photography, sculpture, installation, performance and virtual reality.

Gladwell was born in Sydney in 1972 and graduated from Sydney University's Sydney College of the Arts.

In the late 1990s, Gladwell was a member of the Sydney-based art collective, Imperial Slacks.

Gladwell's video work from 2000 until 2013 saw the artist attempt to systematically catalogue many of the 'movement cultures' that were emerging and evolving within his generation.

In interviews, Gladwell has described his interest in forms of Street dance, extreme sport, and skateboarding.

He subsequently gained a master's degree from the University of New South Wales' College of Fine Arts and undertook further studies as an associate researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London (2001–2002) on a Samstag Scholarship from the University of South Australia.

Initially, the artist studied painting but explored video and other mediums as a postgraduate student.

From 2007 until 2009 the artist applied many of his ideas concerning performance, gesture and the transformation of urban space to natural environments.

During this period, Gladwell spent extended amounts of time in the Australian desert, producing his iconic series of works titled Maddestmaximus (2009).

The series included video of Gladwell car surfing (Interceptor Surf Sequence) and ritualistically burying Roadkill kangaroos (Apologies 1–6).

In late 2009, Gladwell was the Australian War Memorial's Australian official war artists in Afghanistan.

This commissioning program began in World War I with Gladwell being the first video/new media artist in the history of the scheme.

Gladwell has stated that during this commission he became both reliant upon and extremely critical of military technology within the theatre of war.

A key work Gladwell made during his time in Southern Afghanistan is titled Double Field/Viewfinder (Tarin Kowt), 2009–2010.

Gladwell has presented several live performances and choreographies since 2011.

Gladwell was commissioned by the 2013 Gergiev Festival to produce video art for a concert version of Richard Wagner's The Flying Dutchman.

The opera was performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin on Sunday 15 September 2013 at De Doelen, Rotterdam.

Gladwell interpreted Richard Wagner's opera as an Australian surf film by replacing all sailing references in the libretto with ones involving surfing.

Gladwell's performance piece Reversed Readymade (2014) features a professional BMX bicycle rider performing stunts on Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel (1913).

The artist's work from this commission has been documented and analysed in the book Double War by Kit Messham-Muir, published by Thames and Hudson, 2015.

In January 2016, Gladwell presented a new video work titled Skateboarders VS Minimalism.

In 2016, Gladwell co-founded BADFAITH, an independent virtual reality content collective with senior film and television producer Leo Faber.

Members of BADFAITH include artists, film directors, and a scientist involved in VR and AR research.

They have been dubbed VR pioneers by Vogue and Vice – who described their approach to the new immersive medium as "punk".

In interviews, Gladwell stated BADFAITH as a direct reference to the concept proposed by Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Belvouire.

Gladwell has produced several VR experiences through the BADFAITH network including the 6 minute animation Orbital Vanitas.

In 2016 Gladwell was the first documented artist to sell a virtual reality artwork on the Australian market.

Orbital Vanitas premiered at Sundance's 2017 New Frontiers.

In 2017, Orbital Vanitas was also shown at Cannes film festival and the Sydney Film festival amongst others.

Orbital Vanitas was also selected for distribution via the New York Times op docs VR distribution platform NYTVR.

Under the BADFAITH moniker, Gladwell and Faber co-curated the 2017 Sydney Film Festivals VR program.

In mid to late 2019, Gladwell exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney with Pacific Undertow.

Pacific Undertow was the largest survey exhibition to date of the work of Australian artist Shaun Gladwell, best known for his videos representing the body in motion.

The exhibition title, Pacific Undertow, is taken from a pivotal video piece.

It resonates with a sense of elemental forces, motion and the heft of gravity: key principles that inform Gladwell's work.