Courtesy: the artist and MARS Gallery, Melbourne.

Velvet Gloves by Melody Woodnutt is a video work made from 16mm film that fosters voyeuristic and suspended moments of touch that have been inspired by the journey, ethos, and opening of ‘Hedon House’: a queerly-conceived, lovingly-crafted playspace, kink haven, fuck palace, bathouse, garden, healing space, inner urban retreat built for hedonism and new to Melbourne. Parallel to purposeful spacemaking, analogue film is a mode of industrial resistance: a filmmaker kink, a masochistic and hedonistic desire for grain over pixels, reactionary in its slow and manual analogue film processes. These intersecting politics of withdrawal are explored to arrive at a slow-motion alternative found in play.

The accompanying wall mounted night lights expand the work to the domestic space, framing a selection of backlit 16mm still frame images (10mm x 16mm). When relocated to a home, these night lights act as beacons of the erotic, beacons of the body, glowing from the walls as you brush past them in the night. Night lights may act just as lighthouses call for ships, sirens for sailors; the softly lit erotic premonition waits upon the walls for the body to follow.

Opening Event: Saturday 11 November, 4 – 6pm.

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