The Lonesome Receiver
Mark Shorter

The Lonesome Receiver continued Mark Shorter’s depiction and construction of male identity through the persona of Renny Kodgers. This work is the sequel to Hello Stranger; presented at Campbelltown Art Centre, which enacted a classic road movie mise-en-scene to rethink cinematic space and time. For this project, the artist looked at the communication channels and emotional connections of CB radio, favoured by long distance truck drivers. This project formed connection points from Gertrude Glasshouse to Gertrude Contemporary via CB radio, and connected the project to the broader airwaves around Melbourne.

Mark Shorter is a Melbourne-based artist and Head of Sculpture and Spatial Practice at the Victoria College of the Arts, Melbourne. Shorter makes performances and installations that question dominant narratives around landscape, gender and the body by stretching and turning the ideologies that sit deep in their form to see what bends or breaks. He studied at the National Art School, Sydney and the Sydney College of the Arts where he completed a PhD in Visual Arts. Recent exhibitions and performances include 6m of Plinth, Artspace, Sydney (2016); Can’t Look, Can’t Look Away, Counihan Gallery, Melbourne (2016); Mapping La Mancha, Physics Room, Christchurch, New Zealand (2015); 50 Ways to Kill Renny Kodgers, Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart (2014); The Groker, Plato’s Cave, EIDEA House, New York, USA (2015); Obscure Presence, Boxcopy Gallery, Brisbane (2014); and Acts of Exposure, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart (2013). From 2010 to 2012 Shorter was the host of The Renny Kodgers Quiz Hour on FBi94.5FM. His practice has been critically explored in the publications, Mapping La Mancha (2016), What is Performance Art? (2016) and Quixotic Visions, Lismore Regional Gallery (2013).