My starting point is the destabilising of the moving image and with odd conceptual proposals and inventive actions I disrupt its technologies. My practice is a real course of action, discovering new ways for film and video to function. Through trial and error and not separating out process from outcomes I work to rethink conventions weaved into our understanding of lens based media. In the recent work Project Nothing (2007) I interact with the rectangle of light and beam, so synonymous with film, emitted by a 16mm film projector as it projects nothing. I humorously lay bare (in more ways than one) the minimum requirements to make a moving image.
It began, when as a photography student I felt constrained (and bored) by the medium’s truthful capturing of the world and therefore the expectations placed on my activities. It seemed the desired work of a photographer was to focus on appearances. Frustrated I began to disrupt photography’s indexical relationship with the real. For example photographs were made by leaving pinhole cameras in places where I forget things, (down the back of the sofa or shoved in a drawer etc) the shutter was only closed when the camera was remembered - they were Photographs of Forgetfulness. The processes I undertook to stretch photography became more interesting and exciting than any photograph I could ever have taken.
Developing from my still image work, Lost (2005) is a culmination of 6 months of looking for things. I used the video camera to find objects that were missing, the camera being able to see into places normally too difficult to search. The camera explores under the bed, down the backs of radiators and other places you can’t fit a head round. The camera becomes more than a recording device and rather than it passively documenting, it’s mechanics i.e. the zoom turns into the subject of the video. The video is not ‘of’ me searching, it is the byproduct of the camera’s new use.
Film and video are stuff to work in, they are tangible materials to shape and mould. Importantly, their mechanical presence is always apparent in my work and how their existence affects the work and world is considered. Chasing Animals (2007 onwards) is an ongoing work where I am supposed to creep up on animals, capture them looking at me and then run at them. By chasing the animals the camera creates the very action that it is recording. It has created the situation, the subject matter of the video. This is the opposite of the invisibility normally required when filming wildlife. I however am often unable to successfully achieve my proposal, often due to fear (especially of horses). I will keep trying.
Night Arrow (2006) is a visually striking video, its starting point is the action of the camera, which like an arrow points at things. A small transparent arrow is taken on a journey through the chance encounters and colours of a city at night, picking at the different surfaces of the moving image - the interface between two, three and four dimensions.
I have a playful approach that makes my reflexive process innovative and accessible. I situate my work in the everyday, which is the nearest thing to me to use, and inventively transform it. By combining unpredictability with familiarity I want to create an active space in the viewers imagination to take on my work and the change inherent in its demands.
This is also apparent in how I operate as an artist, often working collaboratively to think around new ways for art to function. Rather than a place reliant on results, commodities and finished artefacts we will create a test site for ideas and processes which can be engaged in by an audience at all different stages of trial and take off.