Katrina Sedgwick is the Director and CEO of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), a major national cultural institution located at Melbourne’s iconic Federation Square. Previously, she has been the head of arts for ABC TV and ABC Arts online, and the founding director and CEO of the Adelaide Film Festival.

Daniel Crooks: Phantom Ride
Daniel Crooks, one of the most renowned contemporary artists in Australia, is a Melbourne-based artist working across digital video, photography, sculpture and installation. By manipulating digital footage, Crooks creates still and moving images that compel us to question our understanding of time. Using sophisticated editing and compositing techniques to produce what could be new modes of visual perception, his works encourage us to re-examine our experience of reality.
Phantom Ride is inspired by a history of cinema and, in particular, the way in which trains have been employed as an extension of the camera. The work references the ‘phantom rides’ of early cinema, a genre of film popular in Britain and the United States in the early 1900s. Pre-dating narrative features, these short films showed the progress of a vehicle, usually a train, moving forward by mounting a camera on its front.
For Phantom Ride Crooks filmed disused country railways, abandoned urban train tracks, tram tracks and maintenance depots throughout Victoria and New South Wales. By compositing these images together he has constructed a collaged journey through the natural and constructed, and often abandoned, landscapes of our contemporary environment.
Phantom Ride challenges the singular history of linear time to suggest a world in which multiple presents could be possible. The composited images carry us seamlessly from one world into the next, while also encouraging us to reflect on our existence within time in a way we do not often pause long enough to appreciate.
Katrina Segwick
Director & CEO, ACMI
Media Coverage
All aboard for Daniel Crooks' Phantom Ride at ACMI, Melbourne, The Australian, 7-8 May 2016
Art Review: ACMI’s Phantom Ride by Daniel Crooks is Mesmerizing, FiestaFy.com, May 2016
Screen as time lens, Gail Priest: interview, Daniel Crooks, Phantom Ride, RealTime Arts, Issue #131 Feb-March 2016
Catching the Phantom Ride at White Night Festival, Arts News on ABC iview, available 29 February 2016 to 28 March 2016.
Futurist Daniel Crooks: A chat is the back shed with futurist and artist Daniel Crooks, The Saturday Paper, Saturday 27 February 2016
Daniel Crooks//Meet the Artist, ArtKollectiv, Monday 22 February 2016
Review: ACMI Daniel Crooks' 'Phantom Ride', (Audio Stream + written review), SYN, Monday 22 February 2016
Daniel Crooks: Phantom Ride, interview by Milk Bar, Monday 15 February 2016
White Night 2016 travels through time aboard Daniel Crooks' Phantom Ride, The Age, Saturday 13 February 2016
Publicity

Event: Daniel Crooks Presents
Daniel Crooks Presents: On Art and (The Manipulation of) Time
Tuesday 23 February 2016 Read more

Artist Biography: Daniel Crooks
Daniel Crooks is the recipient of the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission (2014-16) Read more

Media Release: Phantom Ride Exhibition
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and The Ian Potter Cultural Trust are proud to present the world premiere of 'Phantom Ride', a brand new work by one of Australia’s leading moving image artists, Melbourne-based Daniel Crooks. Practising across a range of media including digital video, photography and installation, Crooks’ work plays with the notion of time, stretching and distorting reality while questioning our perception of it. Read more

Media Release: Winner of Ian Potter Moving Image Commission, 2014-2016
The $100,000 Ian Potter Moving Image Commission (2014-2016) for new works by mid-career Australian artists has been awarded to celebrated Melbourne-based video artist, Daniel Crooks. Read more
Work in progress
Work-in-progress: Phantom Ride
Phantom Ride explores the link between tracks and time, a Moving Image Commission update Read more
Daniel Crooks awarded $100,000 Ian Potter Moving Image Commission

Daniel Crooks: Phantom Ride
The second $100,000 commission in this ten-year program for new works by mid-career Australian artists has been awarded to celebrated Melbourne-based video artist, Daniel Crooks.
Judges
IPMIC (2014-16)
The IPMIC Judging Panel comprises experts including curators, visual artists, filmmakers and producers.