Started my project with looking back footages I took as well as researching what other artists have made in the medium of film. I came across Allora & Calzadilla’s work at their exhibition ‘Foreign in a Domestic Sense’ at Lisson Gallery, London last year. The show featured sculpture, performance, photo and video works. I was particularly taken by the video work: the use of slow motion in the sense of the camera capturing, in its timely move, scenes of caves, industrial interior and exterior; the use of light and tonal differences; the angle of viewpoint and simplicity of each frame narrating the story. Then there is Christian Marclay’s ‘The Clock’, a 24-hour long montage of thousands of film images of clocks, edited together so they show the actual time – supposed to be watched at the exact time. The artist spent years editing film frames together where you enter one scene and exit into another from a different film all weaving into each other to make the viewer constantly engage with time. These two examples suggest ways I wish to make work in coming years.
For now, I am sharing a few beautifully captured stills from:
Allora & Calzadilla
The Night We Became People Again, 2017
Digital HD colour video with sound
My interest in exposing the invisible structures of objects results in works that show an everyday object in a less familiar way. As I illuminate an object with light a visual change occurs which either makes the physical properties of the object appear as a different medium or it brings out structural qualities in the objects that are otherwise hidden. It means these qualities and properties are only present while light is. When I work with sunlight, there is a limitation in terms of the total absence of sunlight or the wait for the natural progression of the day as the sun moves across space. Although I find it informative to work with this challenge I also look at ways to trick it. One way is to document it in photography, which I have been doing, the other is in film, which this project allows me to learn into. For the Bursary, I proposed to learn a new skill in editing by attending a short course over the summer in 2018, record my footage and experiment with the medium I am now introducing to my practice. Alongside expanding my practice I also received mentoring with an arts professional to refine the language I use with my work including statements and CVs, and to move towards gaining representation in the arts. In the upcoming posts I am going to talk about the steps I took and the different works I have made and am making.
Image: Mundane no XXX; 2017
cotton fine art archival paper mounted on dibond
42 x 62cm
