2008. Timber, Enamel, Screen. Video 1 minute loop.
Installation shot, as presented in 'We've Got a Love like Electric Sound'**, Seventh Gallery, Fitzroy, Melbourne, 2008
Detail
In this short, looped video crowd footage has been selected from an early 80’s The Jam concert, and slowed down to a rhythmic pace focussing on the pulsatory motion of the amorous crowd juxtaposed with the intent, almost shocking stillness of a photographer amongst them. The crowd thrusts together in wave like unity, all intent on an unseen spectacle before them while the photographer remains still, camera posed and almost predatory. As the crowd continues in this manner there are moments in the film where you are unsure if it is adulation or protest manifest in their actions. Throughout their hectic motion, slow enough that the drive and energy is readable but to emphasise the gesture as a collective one, the photographer remains static. There is a desire and a need in his pose to document and possess the occasion, as much to verify the performer’s presence as his own in theirs. There is a contrast felt between the private meaning of such an interaction and the public nature in which it is played out.
* Title of artwork from Peter York on Roxy Music’s first Album, Frieze Magazine, Issue 113, March 2008
**Title of exhibition taken from Suede's
'Electricity'
