MELBOURNE.- Following the first two critically acclaimed exhibitions resulting from the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission, the third $100,000 commission in the ten-year program for new works by mid-career Australian artists has been awarded to the two very talented Australian artists who form the video sampling collective Soda_Jerk.

Soda_Jerk has been awarded the prize from a field of impressive candidates vying for the prestigious visual art commission – an initiative of The Ian Potter Cultural Trust (IPCT) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). Soda_Jerk take on the IPMIC following the success of their July 2016 work The Was, which they created in collaboration with The Avalanches.

The commission will make possible a new work, Terror Nullius, which will have its world premiere at ACMI in 2018. Equal parts Australian Gothic, eco-horror, and road movie, Terror Nullius is to be a rogue remapping of national mythology. By intricately weaving together fragments of Australia's cultural history and film legacy, Terror Nullius will point towards the unstable entanglement of fiction that underpins this country's vexed sense of self.

Terror Nullius follows on from the success of the two previous commissions, The Calling by Angelica Mesiti and Daniel Crooks’ Phantom Ride (2016), both of which enjoyed critical and popular success upon premiering at ACMI.

In announcing Soda_Jerk as the winning recipient, IPMIC Judge and ACMI Director & CEO, Katrina Sedgwick, praised their innovative work in the rapidly expanding field of moving image art.

“We are thrilled to award Soda_Jerk the third Ian Potter Moving Image Commission. Their work is challenging and cheeky, clever, playful and insightful – and it stood out amongst an incredibly competitive field of applicants. Terror Nullius will confront, poke at and recontextualise the clichés, stereotypes and overwhelming whiteness of our Australian cinema history - and it’s so great that ACMI, as the national museum of film, television, video games and digital art and culture, is hosting its world premiere next year.”

Formed in Sydney in 2002, Soda_Jerk is a two-person art collective that approaches sampling as an alternate form of history-making. Working at the intersection of documentary and speculative fiction, their archival practice has taken the form of video installations, cut-up texts, screensavers and live video essays. Soda_Jerk has recently collaborated with Australian collectives The Avalanches and VNS Matrix, and have held solo exhibitions at Anthology Film Archives in New York, the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington DC, and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Their multi-channel video installations have also been staged at Pioneer Works, New York; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. During 2017 their work will also show at SPACES, Cleveland; Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh and the Barbican, London.

Today Soda_Jerk spoke about their excitement in receiving the commission: "It's a staggering honour to be selected for the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission, our collective head is spinning. But we are also ready to get to work. To be braver, graver, more ambitious, technically dexterous and politically urgent with this project. It is this commission's incredibly generous gift of time and resources, as well as ACMI's expertise, that will make this possible. We are epically thankful".

Lady Potter AC, Trustee of The Ian Potter Cultural Trust, commended Soda_Jerk on being awarded the third Ian Potter Moving Image Commission. “After two successful previous commissions, I am confident the audience will find this ambitious new work by Soda_Jerk both exciting and intriguing. No doubt, Soda_Jerk’s Terror Nullius will draw a young audience with their contemporary approach and use of digital media. This marks another exciting chapter of the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission which is intended to encourage exploration of moving image as an art form.”

The third Ian Potter Moving Image Commission, Soda_Jerk’s Terror Nullius will premiere at ACMI in 2018.