Thames Reflections

This series of moving image pieces was conceived as either single screen works or a 4-screen installation.

The video works are “durational”  8-hour recordings designed for gallery/domestic viewing or other “public space”.

The individual recordings are the result of over a year shooting the same urban landscape scene for 8 hours per day. Each piece shows, more or less exactly, the same area of the Thames Path in Hammersmith, London, with the 4-screen installation showing recordings from the four different seasons of the year.

The works exist at the intersection of moving image (video presentation in form) and painting (wall hung, two dimensional, silent). Importantly (for the artist!) the works are conceived within the chosen time frame of the viewer, as a painting is, rather than in the time frame of the maker, as is ubiquitous with moving image works of all types.

The content refers back to a long tradition of English landscape representation – in painting to Turner, Whistler etc but extended here to the moving image.

Formally, there is a strong internal dialectic between the natural and man-made worlds represented by the two halves of the frame – the “natural” represented by the water, tides, sunlight, birds etc and the “man-made” represented by the embankment wall, the path, the (hidden) building and the passing people with all their varying activities. These opposing principles are sometimes intersected, for example by waves cast by unseen boats and the occasional interaction between the people and the natural world – water, birds etc.

The essence of the piece is of multilayered reflections: the internal processes of the maker and the viewer; the light on the water; the light reflected in the contemporary building from which the filming is done down on to the subject matter below ; the reflection of the movement of the water against the man-made embankment; the pull of the moon creating the tides . . .

Whereas the single screen versions work more as paintings and are best silent, the installation has a background soundtrack.