The Eucharist
“The Eucharist” is a new video art piece by Melbourne emerging artist Matto Lucas.
“The Eucharist” is a 29:00 minute-long, 20% speed looped video projected over the top of a BO size (1414 x 1000mm) matte photo print.
“The Eucharist” will be exhibited at Off the Kerb Gallery in Collingwood as part of the “1 in 10” Group Exhibition in March 2012.
The Eucharist also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord’s Supper, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance. It is reenacted in accordance with Jesus’ instruction at the Last Supper as recorded in several books of the New Testament, that his followers do in remembrance of Him as when he gave his disciples bread, saying, “This is my body”, and gave them wine, saying, “This is my blood”.
The word Eucharist may refer not only to the rite but also to the consecrated bread and wine, used in the rite. In this sense, communicants may speak of “receiving the Eucharist”, as well
as “celebrating the Eucharist”
“The Eucharist” (Matto Lucas 2012) continues Lucas’ obsession with the artist as false idol and the personal as political. The ritual of the Eucharist is seen repeated as a loop, distorted, cut and imprecise, a nightmarish Sisyphus-esque and vulnerable mutation of the religious
practice of the Eucharist. Tainted a warm hue, the video projection of the artist is slightly imbued gold, referencing the Byzantine icons as well as Serrano’s “Piss Christ” (1987), further strengthening connotations associated with the mere presence of the toilet bowl and
it’s association to the red wine which it holds.
The symbol of the toilet bowl acts as both the abjective wound (the abject exists between the concept of an object and the concept of the subject, something alive yet not) and as the synthetic man-made orifice; the anus, the sphincter, and the mouth, holding the wine, the blood of Christ (the Most Precious Blood) or in this form, the artist as false idol.
“The Eucharist” attempts to reconcile the artist’s binary of mind and body.
ARTIST STATEMENT
“This is about me and my worth as a human being in today’s society.
I feel empty.
I attempt to make the unbearable endurable, to provoke, to make the viewer reconsider their own understandings of beauty and of suffering.
I feel empty.”
