Video Art in a Church

Louise Merhi worked for John Kaldor for over 19 years. Beginning as an accountant for John in 2000, Louise started working for Kaldor Public Art Projects in 2004 and saw the organisation grow from just a few employees to a full team, all the while taking on increasingly ambitious projects.

One of the first projects Louise took her children to see was an installation of Bill Viola’s dramatic video works Fire Woman and Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall) at St Saviour’s Church, Redfern, in 2008. Louise always enjoyed visiting the projects with her family, but was surprised by her daughter’s strong and immediate response to Viola's work:

First of all, it was in a church setting. As practising Catholics, the church meant something to the kids.

We went and we sat there, and we watched the videos a few times, and we came out. And, boy, did that open a whole range of questions from my younger one.

We started to talk about things like life and death and heaven and hell. She really blew me away with the questions, and she was seven at the time. I didn’t really expect that. It opened up a different world.

Her questions gave me a whole new perspective about that artwork. You’d go back and look at it in a different way.