• Gerard Byrne
  1984 and Beyond, 2005–07
  Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery, London
  

Gerard Byrne makes film, video and photographic works, as well as installations, that reconstruct particular historically charged conversations. He tests the cultural present against the present evoked in the elements of the past that he focuses on in his works. Conceptually interested in acting and theatre, Byrne has worked on a number of projects with actors and sets which test the historical distinctions between sculpture and set design, acting and non-acting and spectacle and spectator. For the Sydney Biennale, he exhibits 1984 and Beyond (2005–07), a work that re-enacts a discussion published in a 1963 issue of Playboy magazine in which well-known science fiction writers collectively speculated about how they envisioned the future world of 1984. He also premieres An exercise with questions and answers (2008) – a video installation compiled from footage the artist filmed of an acting exercise. As in 1984 and Beyond, Byrne bases his project on text, this time transcripts of interviews with war criminals.

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