Richard
Tuohy
b. August 12, 1969, Melbourne,
Australia.
BIOGRAPHY:Richard began making works on Super 8 in the late 1980s. After a brief hiatus from cinema (including formal study in philosophy for seven years) he returned to film-making in 2004. Initially working exclusively in Super 8, the next five years saw an extremely productive period with dozens of experiments and works finished in the small gauge. In 2006 he, along with his partner Dianna Barrie, launched nanolab, a Super 8 film processing laboratory based at their home in Daylesford Victoria. The establishment of this lab afforded the opportunity to set up darkrooms and install 16mm film processing and most importantly printing and sound recording equipment.
Since 2009 he has been an extremely active and vocal member of the international artist run film lab scene. In 2011 Richard and Dianna started the Artist Film Workshop which in 2012 became a membership based artist-run film lab, itself also part of the international labs network. AFW has become the center of experimental film practice on film in Australia, being the focus for regular experimental film screenings, touring artists programs, workshops and supporting numerous artists in their personal film practice. As of the end of 2017, AFW has held more than 120 screening events among other activities.
Tuohy's own works are firmly in the 'hand-made' film tradition. An advocate for the possibilities of hand made cinema, Tuohy has devoted much time and effort in sharing his knowledge through workshops and classes both in his native Australia and internationally. His films and film based performances have screened at venues including the Melbourne IFF, EMAF (Osnabruck), Rotterdam IFF, New York FF, Ann Arbor and Media City and he has repeatedly toured Europe, North America and Asia presenting solo programs of his work and conducting experimental film-making workshops.
He is the instigator of the AFW magazine Film Is and, along with Dianna Barrie and sue.k. was also a co-founder of the AIEFF experimental film festival in Melbourne.
CRITICAL
OVERVIEW: My early films were formalistic narratives, dedicated as I was then to making homages to Ozu. That's long ago. My work now is abstract, though perhaps the formalistic concern remains. Indeed my films are considered notable for their form and structure.
Ginza Strip
At a screening of some of my Super 8 work in 2008, an audience member described my films as 'films about cameras'. I found that astute, but a trifle unfair. Of course, in my Super 8 period, I didn't really have access to what I consider the 'full' apparatus of cinema – I was yet to immerse myself fully in the laboratory with all its printing and processing possibilities. Yes, in my films of that period, as with now, one sees a lot of camera techniques - classic and novel: lots of pixilation (single frame), double and multiple exposures, mattes and split frames, effect and colour filters, distorting optics, found optics, long exposure blurring, re-photography, alternative stocks and processing, etc., and often several at once. And I do create some of my abstraction in the field and thus 'in camera' (or otherwise in the dark room).
I concur that concern with the apparatus of the medium is much in evidence in my work. But the 'apparatus' for me very much includes the viewer, and it very much includes the maker. More fairly, I would like to say my work is engaged with perception and experience as affected by and through the apparatus of cinema. I am rarely affected by the conceptual in art. I am frequently affected by the phenomenological. The imposition of ideas rarely moves me like the sense of intimacy that one gets from work borne out of a deep dwelling and reflexive habituation with a medium. I like art from makers whose very perceptions have been altered by their intimacy with their medium – who have been taught to see by their medium and have learnt to see the world through their medium. To my mind the more a work exhibits a basis in this kind of primary phenomenological experience the more convincingly it is likely to speak of a kind of truth-reaching authenticity. I strive for this kind of intimacy with the cinema apparatus.
Richard
Tuohy, December 2017.
FILMOGRAPHY:
Pancoran
Filmography 2004 to 2018:
ChinanotChina (2018, 14 min, 16mm)
BlendingandBlinding (2018, 12 min, 16mm)
Pancoran(2017, 9
min, 16mm)
Crossing (2016, 11
min, 16mm)
Inside the Machine (2016, 12
min 3 x 16mm performance with Dianna Barrie)
On the Invention of
the Wheel (2015,
14 min, 16mm)
Crossing
BlueLineChicago (2014, 10 min, 16mm)
GinzaStrip (2014,
9 min, 16mm)
Dot Matrix (2013, 16
min, 2 x 16mm performance with Dianna Barrie)
SeoulElectric (2012, 8 min, 16mm)
ScreenTone (2011, 16 min, 16mm)
Etienne'sHand (2011, 13 min, 16mm)
TasmanianSplintering (2010, 16 min, 16mm)
EchoBones (2010,
7 min, 16mm)
Blue Line Chicago
Horizontals (2010, 11
min, 3 x 16mm performance)
Flyscreen (2009, 8
min, 16mm)
TreeLines (2009, 8 min, 16mm)
Landscape (Rippled
and Rifted, 2009, 7 min, 16mm)
Multitude Studies (2009, 18
mins, 4 x 16mm performance with Dianna Barrie)
Ironwood (2009, 7
min, 16mm)
Eucalyptus Intoxication(2008, 7 min, 16mm)
Old Shed, New Shed(2008, 16 min, Super 8
– digital finish)
Ironwood
Boot Fall (2008, 7 mins, Super 8)
Forbidden Fruit (2007, 7
mins, Super 8)
Mallee Stretching (2007, Super 8)
The City From Whence
MacArthur Returned (2006, 13 mins, Super 8 – digital finish)
Plutonics (2006, 8
mins, unfinished, Super 8)
Red Rover (2006, 8
mins, Super 8)
Champing (2006, 9
mins, Super 8)
Little Boxes (2006, 6
mins, Super 8)
Bristle (2006, 7
mins, Super 8)
Cocky-two
Twisty (2005, 13
mins, Super 8)
Ripple (2005, 5
mins, Super 8)
Strum (2005, 5
mins, Super 8)
Sluicing (2005, 7
mins, Super 8)
The Big Store (2005, 7
mins, Super 8)
Consecration (2005, 8
mins, Super 8)
Bovine (2004, 7
mins, Super 8)
Petal (2004, 5
mins, Super 8)
Bloom Doodle (2004, 5
mins, Super 8)
Twisty
Natives (2004, 5
mins, Super 8)
Cocky-two (2004, 7
mins, Super 8)
Sine Wave (2004, 5
mins, Super 8)
Filmography early 1990s:
Paper
Chains (with Mark La Rosa, 1992,
33 mins, 16mm)
Ordinary
Flux (1991, 47 mins, Super 8)
Love Life (1990,
38 mins, Super 8)
Mallee
Stretching
Distribution and
Collections:
Film-makers Coop New York (numerous
16mm prints in distribution)
Light Cone Paris (numerous 16mm prints
in distribution)
University of Wisconsin Michigan (six
16mm prints in collection)
University of Colorado Boulder (seven
16mm prints in collection)
