Feline Good / Howabout Body Shots?

Feline Good. Howabout Body Shots? brought together two major works by Bruno Booth, offering insight into the multidisciplinary practice of a significant Western Australian artist.

Body Shots was an audio visual installation presented on a custom-built sculptural frame. The screens showed candid views of the disabled body – juxtaposed with familiar landscapes and scenes. A foot that looks like no other lay on a bed of green grass, a knobbly, scarred knee rests on a sandy beach gently washed by the tide. These views linked across screens, forming unusual, unapologetic bodies that float in space. Each of the videos were nine minutes long, referencing the percentage of artists in Australia who identify as disabled, compared to the 20% of the full Australian population.

This work, originally presented as a discrete exhibition at Goolugatup Heathcote in Melville, was paired for tour with a series of day-glo coloured, tracksuit-wearing sculptural cats commissioned for the Art Gallery of Western Australia’s 2021 survey of Western Australian artistic practice, an exhibition titled The View From Here. These bright and irreverent animal ambassadors were placed in unusual and surprising locations throughout the exhibition space, aiming to gently re-orient the viewer’s physical and psychological relationship to the gallery.