Telling It

'Telling it' is a 20 minute 16mm film, transferred to video, depicting the sky at dawn. It was produced in response to an invitation to make work that considered a journey from my home to a gallery (Bloomberg Space) located in the city of London.

I used this commission to explore an aspect of my research that has been intrinsic to other works using video and film such as 'Instances'1999, 'Inscribe', 1993/4 and 'Manifesto 3'. These works have employed various manoeuvres to interrupt the process of making, for example ‘working blind’.

'Telling it' attempted to de-stabilise the primacy of the ‘single shot’ by working within two imposed limits - the length of film stock and the time required to make the journey. This entailed setting in play a dynamic interplay between the moving image and the static shot.

The film was transferred to video and back projected to test the work in terms of the specifics of its materiality and the wider discourse of film. It also proposed a potential space of articulation between image and action that could be thought of as that of the ‘absent performer’. Telling it was commissioned by Bloomberg SPACE Bloomberg PL curated by Sasha Craddock, Graham Gussin and Stephen Hepworth at Bloomberg SPACE gallery for the exhibition ‘To Here’. ‘To Here’ was exhibited from July – September 2006 at Space Bloomberg gallery in London and included the work by Keith Coventry, Mustafa Hulusi, Hew Locke, Dietmar Lutz and John Riddy and reviewed in Time Out (see portfolio). The film was also screened at La Nuit Blanche International Film Festival in Paris, 7 October 2006 as part of a programme curated by Lucy Reynolds, London, for Miss China Beauty Gallery including work by Catherine Yass, Jayne Parker, Vivienne Dick, and Sarah Dobai.