Suky Best
dal 21/2/2002 al 28/4/2002
Segnalato da
21/2/2002
Suky Best
Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art, London
New digital and video work. In her solo show Suky Best will present video and photographic works offering a space for contemplation on how time and nature are mediated by a technological culture. In the work, passages of time are frozen as sequences of still video images. They are presented to us framed, in grids or horizontal lines, often suggesting scientific studies and strip cartoons.
new digital and video work
In her solo show Suky Best will present video and photographic works
offering a space for contemplation on how time and nature are mediated
by a technological culture.
In the work, passages of time are frozen as sequences of still video
images. They are presented to us framed, in grids or horizontal lines,
often suggesting scientific studies and strip cartoons.
Selected images are reassembled as flip-books and activated once again
on video by the artist's hands. It might be tempting to interpret the
flip-book as evoking a more innocent relationship to its subject. Yet
the flip-book images are video stills and their re-presentation on video
both allows us to see the images 'come to life', while denying any
direct encounter with the physical form of the books, much less their
living subjects.
Offering a counterpoint to the drama and spectacle of conventional
wildlife documentaries, this work elicits the same tendency to focus on
those aspects of animal behaviour which suggest human frailties and
emotions. Each image of an animal is at least partly co-opted into a
suggestion for those states of anxiety, complacency, greed or indecision
so familiar to the human viewer.
The work reminds us that Englishness is often defined by a love of
nature. It also evokes a sense of habitual fascination with the
insignificant, a wry look at the everyday creatures which offer a
predominantly urban culture its only contact with wildlife.
This body of work self references its own construction and manipulation.
In a visual analogy to our technological relationship to nature, moments
are stretched out for a prolonged examination whilst others not usually
perceptible are speeded up.
Viewed once, these fragments might appear as quiet observations of small
moments and everyday gestures. Yet the clips repeat continually to
seduce the viewer into an obsessive, mesmerizing gaze where notions of
the real are replaced by playful questioning affecting conventions of
representation and most importantly, the processes of illusion.
Suky Best has had solo shows at The Photographers' Gallery London, The
Centre for Photography Amsterdam, Turnpike Gallery Manchester,
Lighthouse Media Wolverhampton, Street Level Gallery, Glasgow and The
British Council Gallery in Ecuador. In 2001 she exhibited at East
International, Norwich and Ex-machina at NGBK in Berlin and Cologne. She
has exhibited in New York, San Francisco and The 23rd International
Biennal of Graphic Art, Slovenia. She has four solo publications, three
in conjunction with the Festerman Press, and the last as a collaborative
project with Make magazine. Best was Fellow in Printmaking at the
University of Wolverhampton, funded by the Henry Moore Foundation,
1999-2000.
private view: Friday 22 March 6 - 9 pm
Friday Saturday Sunday 2 - 6 pm (or by appointment).
Tel/Fax: 00 44 (0)20 7735 8292
Image: Wildlife Documentary #4 Flora 2002 video still
Next:
Helen Maurer light projections Sarah Woodfine
drawings
17 May - 30 June 2002
Arnaud Desjardin James Ireland Jacqueline Pennell Paulette Phillips
Claudia Pilsl
July/August 2002
Museum of Garden History group exhibition
Danielle Arnaud
123 Kennington Road
London SE11 6SF