Patrick Tarrant
2021Frankston
Patrick Tarrant
Frankston is a study of the place I grew up, a satellite of Melbourne with affordable housing, nature-strips and beach views. The downright ordinary nature of the opportunities and festivities afforded by Frankston, and the ambivalence one can feel going back there, nonetheless give rise to a new aesthetic: the suburban symphony. In this case the symphony is rendered in strange hues and luminescences as though affirming Robin Boyd’s depiction of ‘the Australian ugliness’ in 1960, where he claims that “taste has become so dulled and calloused that anything which can startle a response on jaded retinas is deemed successful.”
Frankston
Mandatory Training
Patrick Tarrant
A short, socially critical mosaic shot on 16mm film explores how much the way of thinking has changed in Western society in the past few decades, wondering whether equality and diversity are a matter of course, or whether they are still just meaningless words. Patrick Tarrant’s film juxtaposes excerpts from White magazines from the past century and mechanical voice-over segments of an online learning module on equality, inclusion and diversity for present-day employees. – Ji.hlava IDFF 2021 "Mandatory Training is a slightly ornery reaction to being forced to complete computer-based training and tests on matters that range from the banal to the ideological. For better or worse, if you answer wrongly on a question relating to race or gender, for example, you can, as the module explains, keep repeating the test until you pass." – Patrick Tarrant
Mandatory Training
