Darwin with Tears – Lyndal Jones at ACCA

When you enter the main gallery at the current survey of Australian video artist Lyndal Jones, sound hits you like an unexpected breaker. The cacophony of planes, cars, wind and human voices is overwhelming both physically – it’s loud, and mentally – the sounds of disparate pieces clamour for your attention. Added to this is the anxious chirping of a cage of finches, and the heady aroma of their faeces and feathers.   Scattered around the gallery are small televisions with poppies on them, like a strange field for our technological age.

Jones’ work centers on sexual relations, courting rituals of humans and wildlife, and the physical manifestations of emotion. Her fascination with the body is evident throughout the exhibition. Her camera often moves in close to the skin, in one work the rugged leather of a giant sea turtle fills the screen, taking the form of a rocky landscape, while in another, her camera watches a very ugly penis grow erect and then become flaccid again. This interest in the physical frequently extends from the image on screen and into the viewer’s affective experience. In a work where a camera has been fixed to the front of a stunt plane, the earth turns rapidly upside down in a way that made me feel dizzy and very aware of my body. In another room a man sobs loudly until you stand in a circle in front of him, thus giving you the feeling of having control over his emotions.

My favourite piece in this show is Freud’s Couch, a work where a woman’s voice speaks in stream of consciousness manner, as if she is in psychoanalysis, about her sexual fantasies and dreams, while a man performs various actions on screen. Sitting, moving his glasses, taking off his shirt, lying down on a couch covered with a richly patterned fabric, closing his eyes, getting up again. The actions are made in a ritualistic, meditative way, and the same shots are cut together in different combinations. At times, the camera wanders in close, moving out of focus, making landscapes of the creases in his shirt, the hairs on his hands, the curve of his elbow. The woman’s voice is hypnotic, too intimate to be trusted, as she spins first one fantasy then another, an invisible femme fatale ensnaring the child-like man with her desire.

There is a lot of work in this show and the sensory overload can be exhausting. It was only after my second visit that I began to enjoy the work. The exhibition ends tomorrow.