Lucy Reynolds, Lake (Nocturne) (2007). 16mm transferred to video, silent b&w, 10'. Courtesy of the artist.
Lake (nocturne) is a study of the interplay of artificial light with the
changing patterns and movements in nature, exploring the illuminations and obfuscations that occur in landscape after dark. The shadowy forms of landscaped lake and parkland also resonate with past narratives of the pleasure garden, recalling the original meaning of nocturne as a term for music composed to be performed at night-time, as accompaniment to the
illuminated tableaux, spectacles and fétes of grand gardens, evoking a lost domain.
Duncan Marquiss, Midday (2011). 16mm transferred to DV, silent, b&w, 3'. Courtesy of the artist.
Duncan Marquiss, Late Cinema (2009). 16mm transferred to DV, silent, colour, 5'24''. Courtesy of the artist.
Sarah Pucill, Blind Light (2007). 16mm transfered to video, 22'. Courtesy of the artist and LUX, London.
Blind Light is filmed in the artist's London loft. The presence of camera, studio and artist/performer are registered through image and sound, the loss of the former filling out the presence of the latter. In this way the physicality of object, space and subject as well as their interiority is fleshed out, mapping out a space that is at once material and psychical. Controlling the light she allows into the frame, the artist lifts the blinds or pulls them shut, applies or removes lens filters, opens wide the aperture or closes it. Each performance or action threatens the image as it shifts in and out of 'proper' exposure until it disappears completely. Focusing either on the window or the sky, the artist narrates her camera operation whilst also describing what she sees; intermixing receptive and projective vision. 'I can't look', she says, 'the clouds are coming in', 'there's been no rain for weeks', 'the eye burns, swells, looses focus and disappears in a stream'. Between aperture, eyeball, sun and moon, source and projection swap place. The film journeys from the grounded reality of the here and now – audibly represented through footsteps, birds and traffic, to a psychical space expressed through voice and abstraction. Blind Light explores the fold between the materiality of film, the psyche and the body.
Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth, If You Can't See My Mirrors I Can't See You (2010). Single channel video, 16'. Courtesy of the artists.
An online video chat generates two live portraits with changeable backdrops. It is a digital two-way mirror, a self-reflexive feedback loop wherein we witness ourselves talking back. 'If You Can't See My Mirrors I Can't See You' invites the audience to eavesdrop upon the artists' Skype conversation. The dynamics of the dialogue are recorded and reassembled, to reveal spaces between and around objects and subjects. The computer screen operates as both a mirror and lamp, whilst acting as a frame into another world and a mimetic means of duplicating information.
