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This exhibition explores ideas around mimicry and impersonation, re-performance or reiteration, as artists and collectives expand on the notion of the cover version and its subversive potential within the digital age. Cover Versions: Mimicry and Resistance quotes from the histories of music, popular culture and the internet, ethnography and the natural world. This is expressed through a range of mediums that include sound art and instrumentation, video, photography, installation and robotics.

In music the cover version is realised as the re-performance, sampling or development of an existing piece, creating an expanded version or new original. In the natural world, animals use mimicry as a mode of camouflage for the purposes of survival, while humans employ it for social commentary or political subversion. In contemporary net culture and social media this is signalled by the repost, retweet or meme: in homage or critique, or towards the construction of identity. Mimicry has been equated with camouflage but also like holding up a mirror. Through the artifice of their construction, these works reveal something about the nature of our times.

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The exhibition catalogue featuring essays by Anna Briers and Joel Stern is available from the SAM Shop or in Australian public libraries. DOWNLOAD DIGITAL CATALOGUE.

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