Download files
Abstract
It has been the aim of this research to elucidate upon the themes that make up and inform my practice; the absurd, art as praxis, and the use of mythic and ritualistic performance in art.
In my video and film works the processual behaviour of repetition and ritual gesture are employed in the acute portrayal of the severities of mans life.
When selecting the location of a film, I look for the potential for transformation. The action portrayed; the struggle. pilgrimage, endurance, the act of making itself becomes the agent of change. The natural and ontological elements of the site and materials are explored sculpturally in my films, to which in turn the actors react and relate.
In the video Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better, a lone man climbs a vast mountain, when he is close to reaching the summit, he rolls back down. Like Sisyphus, he is caught in a process of ascendancy and decadency. The difference in this case is that the man has become the rock. The man, mountain and rock have merged.
The 16mm films Move and Chop both show the ritualistic performance of a man breaking apart rocks. In Move we see a man alone in an overgrown fort, after sometime he is joined by three others. With each chop and movement they create piles or rocks to be further chopped in half. Another man then enters into the location and brings new rocks by wheel burrow to be chopped. The point of their action is unclear, ceaseless and absurd. The site has become a stage for the performative act.
In Chop, 2010, we again see one of the characters from Move in a darkened subterranean space. Light comes through a shaft from above creating again a stage-like environment. This man is pushed to his physical limit and accordingly the space he is in speaks of this struggle. As he chops these rocks over and over again we are party to the creative process in which he is engaged. The breaking apart of the boulders in front of him becoming a sculpture in motion.