Dive into The Tank with Angelica Mesiti

Immerse yourself in a stunning exploration of humanity’s connection to the beauty and volatility of the natural cycles of the world with The Rites of When by Angelica Mesiti – now on display at the Art Gallery of NSW. 

The Rites of When is a highly engaging audiovisual experience composed of seven huge video screens, which explores humanity’s connection to nature – with all the love and hostility that aeons-long relationship will always include. 

This incredible piece is the first major commission of an Australian artist for The Tank, the Gallery’s newest exhibition and performance space.

It’s a project that’s been in the making for a long time, explains Mesiti. 

“The conversation started in January 2020, and then it was interrupted by one and a half years by the pandemic,” she tells City Hub. “There was a long process of development of the ideas and concepts of the work, and then because it’s a work about the seasons we shot it over a year and a half because we needed to catch images in the middle of summer and winter.”

Across two major movements that relate to the winter and summer solstices, Mesiti captures a number of striking images: celestial motions, sweeping landscape shots and human rituals that travel across the various screens and dance throughout the expansive space.

The experience of watching The Rites of When is uniquely entrancing – each image stirs an evocative sense of mood in the viewer, as it oscillates between the extremes of winter and summer effortlessly. One sequence depicts a dance around a fire in the middle of winter that’s equally stunning and overwhelming; another shows a group slowly moving through a shifting gradient. A sequence towards the end, dubbed Collective Ecstasy, is particularly stunning for the way it gradually takes over the entire Tank.

Angelica Mesiti fully utilises the tank

Though it’s been used for a number of impressive exhibitions and events in the past, The Rites of When truly takes full advantage of the space with its wholly unique acoustics and aesthetics. 

It is impossible to view all seven screens at the same time, which means every viewer of The Rites of When each experiences a unique view and perspective on the installation. 

“I was really aware of the columns in the space,” says Mesiti, “and that it wasn’t a place where a viewer would be able to sit in one place and watch the image all at once. I knew it had to be a work with multiple perspectives, and had to have multiple ways of looking at the work.” 

“I’ve been interested for a long time in how a viewer or spectator moves through a space, and how you can develop a choreography that guides the viewer and allows them to become the editor of their own experience.” 

As a work fully commissioned and designed for The Tank, The Rites of When feels extra special and is an experience that can only be fully appreciated at the NSW Art Gallery, shared with the people standing alongside you in the dark. 

Angelica feels very blessed to be the first Australian artist to fully dive deep into the possibilities of the tank. “It’s an honour to be invited to produce work here,” she says. When the idea first came up, I was really blown away, and it’s been an amazing adventure.” 

“The Art Gallery has been super supportive, and the invitation is a really generous gesture. It’s been a long process of conversations with the curatorial staff as the ideas developed, and I’ve been very well accompanied through the whole process.”

Angelica hopes that audiences can enjoy entirely unique experiences with The Rites of When: “It’s a kind of a journey, and it’s a really open-ended experience. I think it’s very open to interpretation, more of a poem than a narrative film. So it really allows people to make up their own minds.”

The Rites of When by Angelica Mesiti is on display at the Art Gallery of NSW now, until May 2025.