A Vanishing Point | Akil Ahamat and Kalanjay Dhir

Image courtesy of the artists

‘A Vanishing Point’ is the first collaboration between Akil Ahamat and Kalanjay Dhir. The artwork follows Ash, a recently cremated person, and its unseen friend, Wind.

‘A Vanishing Point’ is staged in the games engine, Unreal Engine 5. Using advanced particle simulation and high resolution environment rendering overlayed with simplistic two-dimensional animation, the work plays with histories of representation, image-making and belief.

The work takes its name from a technique used by Renaissance painters to represent three-dimensional reality within two-dimensions where parallel lines seem to disappear or meet at a horizon. In this narrative, the vanishing point also refers to Ash’s regrets about their life and the parallel lines of faith and culture that dictated the path of its life and its friends.

Drawing on existing prose from contemporary ballads, mediaeval poetry and folk music, Ash reflects on love lost and interfaith friendships from its human life. As Ash looks to the horizon of the afterlife and Wind breathes life into the scene once more, Ash laments, “Do we go to different after-lifes?”

 

Akil Ahamat is an artist that has spent too long sitting in the dark. It has ruined their eyes and rotted their brain. In their work they animate the non-human in order to talk to it. In the crinkles and whispers of these conversations, shapes of the inhuman forces that govern our lives emerge as well as our relationships to them. 

Akil has most recently produced online works for Parramatta Artist Studios, Sydney Review of Books, and PACT, Erskineville. They have most recently exhibited physically at The Physics Room, Christchurch, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Monash University Museum of Art, and UTS ART. Akil was shortlisted for the NSW Visual Arts Emerging Emerging Fellowship (2020) and was the winner of the John Fries Award, UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2018). Akil is currently a resident at The Clothing Stores Studios at Carriageworks.

Kalanjay Dhir is an artist and musician based in Sydney on unceded Dharug land. His work uses sculpture and video and draws on popular culture, sci-fi and history. Kalanjay enjoys thinking about the imprint that human consciousness will leave on the earth and surrounding cosmos. Recently, he has been creating a body of work exploring the potential of physical hand-rod puppets as didactic and speculative tools for beyond human thinking.

From 2017-2020, he worked from Parramatta Artists’ Studios and in 2019 this led to co-founding Pari, an independent artist-run space supported by CreateNSW, and co-directed with local peers. Alongside Kilimi and DJ Atro, he hosted Wednesday Sunset on FBi Radio for 3 years, spotlighting emerging musical acts from west and southwest Sydney. 

In 2022 Kalanjay completed a major moving image commission for the launch of the new PHIVE building. In 2021, Kalanjay was commissioned to produce original video works for Sydney Opera House as part of shortwave and for ACMI which premiered at the Shed in NY and Art Basel in Switzerland as part of Unfinished Camp. In 2020, he presented at Next Wave Festival, was the recipient of the Fauvette Loureiro Emerging Travelling Scholarship and in 2024 was a finalist in the NSW Visual Arts Fellowship (Emerging).

About BLEED

BLEED (Biennial Live Event in the Everyday Digital) interrogates the relationship between the digital and the live.

A Vanishing Point is commissioned and produced by Campbelltown Arts Centre as part of BLEED 2024.

BLEED (Biennial Live Event in the Everyday Digital) was conceived by Campbelltown City Council through Campbelltown Arts Centre, and The City of Melbourne through Arts House. BLEED 2024 is produced and presented by Campbelltown Arts Centre, Arts House, and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in partnership with Treasure Hill Artist Village. BLEED 2024 is presented by Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney, Arts House Melbourne and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth.

When

Location

Campbelltown Arts Centre, 1 Art Gallery Road, 2560, View Map