About
I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are,
In case you don't know I'll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you're home.
- The Velvet Underground, 1967
My current research takes the cinema as its primary focus; its rituals, semblance and audience. Considered by many to be the new church of escapism, I am fascinated by the transcendental quality of the cinema and its ability to transport and transform us from a state of active viewing to an unquestioning state of passive spectatorship. More specifically, my current art practice is centered on redefining the function and physicality of the cinema screen. No longer a barrier, but a mirror, I create sculptural video systems that encourage a self-reflexive viewing and increased awareness of the viewer to the film/video content.
Through using the ‘Dogme’ filmmaking technique of Danish film director Lars Von Trier and by making playful reference to Dan Graham’s seminal piece Performance/Audience/Mirror (1977), the characters in my films are often the audiences that come to view them; the sets, locations and props are determined from outside the cinematic space rather than from within it. The work also flirts with Yve Lomax’s research surrounding notions of ‘the event’ and questions the extent to which we are comfortable with confronting our quotidian realities when housed within a fictitious cinematic space.
Other influences are derived from Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (1935) and its position in the contemporary debate surrounding the politics of the aesthetics involved in the production of this form of art. I also take direction from the work of film director Michel Gondry, the photographic and curatorial practice of Wolfgang Tillmans and Sophie Calle and Steve McQueen’s 2008 feature film, Hunger. Literary influences include the dramatic of Samuel Beckett, Vermillion Sands by J. G. Ballard, Life: A Users Manual by George Perec and Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Reflect what you are,
In case you don't know I'll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you're home.
- The Velvet Underground, 1967
My current research takes the cinema as its primary focus; its rituals, semblance and audience. Considered by many to be the new church of escapism, I am fascinated by the transcendental quality of the cinema and its ability to transport and transform us from a state of active viewing to an unquestioning state of passive spectatorship. More specifically, my current art practice is centered on redefining the function and physicality of the cinema screen. No longer a barrier, but a mirror, I create sculptural video systems that encourage a self-reflexive viewing and increased awareness of the viewer to the film/video content.
Through using the ‘Dogme’ filmmaking technique of Danish film director Lars Von Trier and by making playful reference to Dan Graham’s seminal piece Performance/Audience/Mirror (1977), the characters in my films are often the audiences that come to view them; the sets, locations and props are determined from outside the cinematic space rather than from within it. The work also flirts with Yve Lomax’s research surrounding notions of ‘the event’ and questions the extent to which we are comfortable with confronting our quotidian realities when housed within a fictitious cinematic space.
Other influences are derived from Walter Benjamin’s essay The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility (1935) and its position in the contemporary debate surrounding the politics of the aesthetics involved in the production of this form of art. I also take direction from the work of film director Michel Gondry, the photographic and curatorial practice of Wolfgang Tillmans and Sophie Calle and Steve McQueen’s 2008 feature film, Hunger. Literary influences include the dramatic of Samuel Beckett, Vermillion Sands by J. G. Ballard, Life: A Users Manual by George Perec and Jealousy by Alain Robbe-Grillet.