Peter Callas is an Australian artist, curator and writer, particularly known for his pioneering video art using computer graphics made with the

Fairlight Fairlight may refer to: In places: * Fairlight, East Sussex, a village east of Hastings in southern England, UK * Fairlight, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney, Australia * Fairlight, Saskatchewan, Canada In other uses: * Fairlight (company), ...

CVI (Computer Video Instrument).Meigh-Andrews, Chris, ''A History of Video Art'', second edition,

Bloomsbury Publishing Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. Bloomsbury's head office is located on Bedford Square in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a US publishing office located in ...

2014,

Biography

After completing a

B.A. A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree ...

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

majoring in Fine Arts and Ancient History, Callas worked as an assistant film editor in the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is ...

. Callas then studied at

Sydney College of the Arts The Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) is a contemporary art school that was a faculty of the University of Sydney from 1990 until 2017, when it became a school of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Until the end of 2019, the campus was locat ...

majoring in Printmaking and Sculpture'Peter Callas: Interviewed by Nicholas Zurbrugg' in ''Electronic Arts in Australia'' Zurbrugg, Nicholas (ed), Continuum, 1994 ISN 1030-4312 and began making video artworks using performance and image processing, after attending a workshop by Douglas Davis and also seeing the work of

Peter Campus Peter Campus (born 1937 in New York, NY), often styled as peter campus, is an American artist and a pioneer of new media and video art, known for his interactive video installations, single-channel video works, and photography. His work is held i ...

for the first time. Callas completed ''Singing Stone'' then ''Our Potential Allies'' in 1980, based on a book of the same name issued to US troop in

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

during WW2. The work won an award in Kobe which allowed Callas to travel to Japan for the first time. He completed a number or artist residencies in Japan and the US in the 1980s including at the Marui Koendori Television/Ring World studio in the

Marui is a Japanese multinational retail company which operates a chain of department stores in Tokyo as well in other major Japanese cities. They are best known for their women's fashion and accessories, which are aimed at the 25–35 age range. ...

Department Store, Tokyo.Cavallaro, Alessio (ed) ''Peter Callas: Initialising History'', dLuxedition.one, Sydney 1999, During 1994-1995 he was artist-in-residence at the ZKM , Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe. Key works by Callas include ''If Pigs Could Fly (The Media Machine)'' (1987), ''Night's High Noon: An Anti-Terrain'' (1988) with music by SPK, the installation ''Men of Vision: Lenin + Marat'' (1992), ''Neo Geo: An American Purchase'' (1990) with music by

Stephen Vitiello Stephen Vitiello is an American visual and sound artist. Originally a punk guitarist he is influenced by video artist Nam June Paik who he worked with after meeting in 1991. He has collaborated with Pauline Oliveros, Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) and ...

and ''Lost in Translation'' (1994–99). He has curated a number of video programs including ''An Eccentric Orbit: Video Art in Australia 1980 - 1994'' which included works by Callas,

Philip Brophy Philip Brophy, born in Reservoir, Melbourne 1959 is an Australian musician, composer, sound designer, filmmaker, writer, graphic designer, educator and academic. Music In 1977, Brophy formed the experimental group → ↑ → more often writt ...

Destiny Deacon Destiny Deacon HonFRPS (6 February 1957 – 23 May 2024) was an Australian photographer, broadcaster, political activist and media artist. She exhibited photographs and films across Australia and also internationally, focusing on politics and ...

John Gillies John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Second Ep ...

, Jill Scott and Bill Seaman, and was shown at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York and 15 venues in North America, Asia, Europe and Australia. The programme was divided into three sections: 'The Body Electric', responses to physical and psychological entrapment, and the release from that entrapment through dreams, technology and the imagination; 'Any Resemblance to Reality is Purely Deliberate', 'magical’ construction and deconstruction in or through computer culture; and 'The Diminished Paradise', examining ideas of place and placelessness. A retrospective of his work, ''Peter Callas: Initialising History'' was presented at the

Art Gallery of New South Wales The Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872 and known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales between 1883 and 1958, is located in The Domain, Sydney, Australia. It is the most import ...

in 1999. Screening retrospectives of his video works have been held at the

, New York; the

Kölnischer Kunstverein The Kölnischer Kunstverein is an art museum in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia state, Germany. It is named after the historical art society of the same name. The ''Kölnischer Kunstverein'' was a " Kunstverein" established in Cologne in 1839 ...

, Cologne; the

Institute of Contemporary Arts The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an modernism, artistic and cultural centre on The Mall (London), The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. Located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps a ...

, London; and the

Berlin Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (), usually called the Berlinale (), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europ ...

. The retrospective, ''Peter Callas: The Invisible Histories of the Present'', at Millenáris Park, Budapest, 2006, was held across two galleries and showed 20 moving images works simultaneously along with a comprehensive collection of his prints. His videos have also been screened on television stations including

BBC2 BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matter, incorporating genres such as comedy, drama and ...

, London; Canal +, Paris;

SAT.1 Sat.1 () is a German free-to-air television channel that is a part of the ProSiebenSat.1 Media Group. It is considered the first privately owned television network in Germany, having been launched in January 1984 as ''PKS'' ''(Programmgesell ...

, Cologne;

WGBH-TV WGBH-TV (channel 2), branded GBH or GBH 2 since 2020, is the primary PBS List of PBS member stations, member television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Affiliated stations and facilities WGBH-TV is the Flagship (broadcasting), ...

, Boston;

NHK , also known by its Romanization of Japanese, romanized initialism NHK, is a Japanese public broadcasting, public broadcaster. It is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television licence, television license fee. NHK ope ...

Satellite, Tokyo;

Televisión Española (acronym TVE, branded tve, "Spanish Television") is Spain's national state-owned public television broadcaster and the oldest regular television service in the country. It was also the first regular television service in Equatorial Guinea. T ...

, Madrid; and the ARS TV NETWORK, European Satellite TV Channel, Rome.http://videoartchive.org.au/pcallas/ Australian Video Art Archive, accessed 18 September 2017

References

External links

Scanlines: Media Art in Australia since the 1960s, Peter Callas
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Callas, Peter Australian artists Australian video artists 1952 births Living people