WORKS 2009 - 2013 >
THE BLACK FRIAR [2013]
5 min 24 sec, 35mm still film transferred to digital, black and white, stereo.
In 1275 the Dominican Friars of London moved their priory from Holborn, to a location between the Thames and Ludgate Hill. In 1538, it was closed during Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. Much later, in 1875, the Black Friar public house was built there, upon the original site of the 13th century Dominican Friary. The Black Friar proposes a relationship between the speculative language employed by the redevelopment of these areas, and the form of the hypnosis script. The pre-emptive voice in the work suggests a movement between archaeological pasts and futures, located beneath the site of a stopped clock.
“OUR FUTURE IS EVERYONE'S FUTURE. VISION 20:20 AT ONE BLACKFRIARS - PROOF OF OUR FAR SIGHTED APPROACH TO CREATING TOMORROW'S COMMUNITIES” [Advertising at 1 Blackfriars, development site, 2013]
The Black Friar was screened as part of 'Emplacing' at CloseUp Film Centre, London curated by Sharone Lifschitz / Moving Image Research Centre, UEL [2018]; and as part of 'An Endless Volume' curated by Adam Pugh in 'Invisible Fabrick' and screened at Lazar House, an ancient rarely accessible building founded as Norwich Leper Hospital [2014]; it was first shown as part of the group exhibition 'Every Bird Brings a Different Melody to the Garden', curated by Amy Botfield and Robert Dowling at No Format, London [2013].
THE MIRACLE METHODS SERIES: Distance Readers [2012]
1 - 2 min per episode, HD, colour, silent; public broadcast and information screens
THE MIRACLE METHODS SERIES is a series of episodes that consider the nature of the game and the forecast. Distance Readers comprises four silent moving-images. At the centre of each 'Reader is a game where four winds – East, South, West, and North - are indicated as players and oracles. A 'distance reader' is also a term used within the context of card-sharping and the act of marking cards to cheat, where it is the defocusing of the eyes to spot fluid residue on an opponent’s distant cards. The 'readers' are regular players in a Mah Jong group in Weymouth, in whose sessions I participated over a period of 5 months. The work was first shown as an intervention between adverts and travel-updates on council information screens in bus-stops, libraries and other public buildings, and screened between broadcasts on large-scale BBC screens, installed on the beach in Weymouth for the Maritime Olympics. It developed from A Luminous Reader, a performance for Lucky PDF TV at Frieze Projects in 2011.
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Images. Film stills, and installation view, Portland and Weymouth, 2012.
A+X+M [2010]
9 min 45 sec, DV, colour, stereo
A + X + M was filmed and subsequently installed in the print-workshop at Wimbledon College of Art. An unseen narrator, also the print-technician, recalls standing on the rooftop of a building, witness to the coming of an event of epic proportion. In another scene, a conversation next to a photo-exposure unit is remembered. In yet another, a game or many games, are played. There are always three winners. The script of the film was produced in parallel to a chemical process developing photo-etch plates - details of video stills taken from Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet's film collaboration 'Last Year at Marienbad' [1961]. Light entering through interior and exterior windows in the workshop is filtered through UV-stop amber gels, and the film is projected on a loop in a room behind the etch-baths.
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Images. film stills, and installation view, Wimbledon College of Art, 2010.
My voice belongs to you [2010]
4 min 28 sec, DV, black and white, silent.
My voice belongs to you draws on a series of reconfigured hypnosis scripts to propose a silent, persistent voice. There is a suggestion of the experience of speech in trance. The work borrows from auto-hypnosis models, in which a text may be recorded and rehearsed at home.
& Image. film still