Amos Gebhardt
Amos Gebhardt
(b. 1976, Adelaide, South Australia. Lives and works in Melbourne)
Amos Gebhardt is an artist and filmmaker operating in the realm of moving image, photography and cross-disciplinary collaborations at a cinematic scale. Informed by an extensive career in film and television, Gebhardt’s work explores the confluences of nature, culture and the body.
Lovers, 2018, is a two-channel 4K video installation that builds on Gebhardt’s ongoing inquiry into non-human narratives as a way to understand notions of interdependence. The work showcases a striking series of thoroughbred horses at the height of mating season. Through the scale of the work and the physicality of the equestrian protagonists, the viewer becomes engulfed in the dramatic tension of the beings’ powerful dance. Speaking with NGV Senior Curator of Photography Susan van Wyk during a live conversation in 2021, Gebhardt, who grew up around horses, explained:
I’m interested in pushing this idea of human exceptionalism and human drama as the chief way we try to understand empathy. I want to invite the audience to consider being attuned to a narrative and sense of drama that exists in another world or species.’
Born in Adelaide, Gebhardt studied law and screen production at Flinders University before completing a master’s degree in direction at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney. Since then, they’ve gone on to build a career in film and television, and have received multiple awards for their work. They have exhibited solo at Tolarno Galleries and Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, at Samstag Museum of Art in Adelaide, and at Sydney Contemporary international art fair. In 2021, The Substation hosted Spooky Action (at a distance), a major exhibition spanning four years of the artist’s practice, as part of PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. Gebhardt is represented by Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.