Playlist:

Portrait

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In this week's Playlist we have a selection of videos on the theme of portraits.


Jessie Brennan, 43 Strangers, 2010

43 Strangers (2010) is a video and drawing installation developed from a drawing performance at a market location in London in which the encounter between artist and 'sitter' is explored. During the performance Brennan invited members of the public to draw her portrait while she drew theirs, looking directly at each other and without looking at the paper. A series of videoed portraits record the intimacy exchanged between strangers, occurring as a result of the drawing process. The work investigates experiences of public and private space, challenging expectations of accepted social interaction through an invitation to engage the gaze.

Check out Jessie's profile on Axisweb >


Claire Hope, Group Photo, 2014

This commissioned moving image work for Gallery II is based on the generic group photograph. Yet in this staged work, how the group behave and are viewed by the camera, also how we as viewers feel about them becomes increasingly unpredictable. The work draws on emotional extremes common to contemporary media’s reality shows, competitions, not least cinema and web-based media – which may invite a powerful empathy towards those we watch - as often as a ‘judging’ coldness. Where such extremes seem to amplify wider attitudes in social life, like valorising love or achievement, in this moving image work affection and assessment become the poles around which the formal and promotional group photograph is depicted. But the contrast between these imagined portraits, and the way the camera treats the group, seems to invite different sorts of action and interaction.

Check out Claire's profile on Axisweb >


Liam O'Connor, Self Portrait as Casper White, 2011

LCD monitor in wooden frame; HD digital film on media player, 11 minute film (continuous loop); colour, silent. 2011

Check out Liam's profile on Axisweb >


Lisa Wilkens, Preventing the portrait: The getting rid of [the image], 2011

A video I made grinding down the stone I had drawn the 'Deceased' Osama Bin Laden image on. It was something I had wanted to do from the day I grinded down a stone for the first time. The action of 'erasing' an image this way is quite powerful and much more exhausting then any other method of erasing or destroying an image (e.g. press 'delete' on a computer, ctrl. + x, burn an image, tear appart a photograph, using an eraser)

Check out Lisa's profile on Axisweb >


More film and video works >