EXHIBITION: FLOATING WORLDS – CHRISTOPHER KÖLLER AT RMIT – TAASA Review March 2018

Susan Scollay F loating Worlds was an extraordinary recent exhibition/installation of large-scale photographs and video works shot in Japan by Christopher Köller.

In the course of a three month residency at the Australia Council’s studio in Tokyo, Köller recorded the lives of the growing number of young Japanese for whom surfing provides an antidote – or even an alternative – to the intensity and high-tech conformity of city life. Untitled from the series Floating Worlds (2003), Christopher Köller. The moody video images set up on four screens in one of RMIT’s gallery spaces highlighted the disparity between the industrialised, dangerous conditions of Japan’s beaches and the freedom and contact with nature they bring to the young people who have taken up surfing in the last twenty years (untitled video still, Floating Worlds).

In an adjacent room Köller’s inquisitive eye missed little in his footage of six young surfers looking straight at the camera discussing their “obsession” with their way of life that “means everything” to them...