Total Recall (2017) is a collaborative exhibition by Grace Connors and Carly Lynch, which began in 2016 as an investigation into the traces that remained of the Planet Video store, previously located at 646 Beaufort Street, Mount Lawley.
Reclaiming moments of collective guilt, mourning and seemingly ritualistic practices, Connors and Lynch
sensitively explore the ways in which this cornerstone of film appreciation in Perth has now been excavated, renovated and superseded.
The exhibition is an installation of fragmented objects, audio and video, which speak of anxieties towards loss of memory and physicality; whilst also celebrating the pathos and failure explicit in the history of B-grade films made in Australia.
The title of the show can be read on two levels: it refers firstly to the science fiction film of the same name from 1990, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Whilst also referring to ‘eidetic memory’, or the ability of an individual to accurately recall a large number of images, sounds and objects in a seemingly unlimited volume.
It is through these last remnants liberated from the discount boxes of this rich archive; that Total Recall hopes to remember, and celebrate these past materialities to rebuild a sense of the lost site.
In response to this collaboration, artist and writer Kieron Broadhurst has penned the essay The Mummy Returns (2001), which Connors and Lynch have integrated into the installation through spoken word
Total Recall is being shown until December 21 at Smart Casual Gallery in Fremantle, Western Australia.
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