don't stop 'til you get enough

Commissioned by Matt’s Gallery, London in 2004 to construct an installation to present recent video works, this exhibition was funded by the Henry Moore Foundation and was the result of research undertaken by Baseman in the period 2002, including works completed during a Henry Moore Sculpture Fellowship at the British School at Rome (2003), a Visiting Artist Fellowship at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia (2004) and a commission for the Eden Project, Cornwall (2002) funded by the Arts Council England.

Working in the field of narrative contemporary art video, the exhibition consisted of five, single-screen portrait-based works that Baseman created in order to embody the idea that narrative and structured storytelling can become the primary source for content, contesting the convention that contemporary art-based videos are primarily ambient in nature and without the recognized structure of a beginning, middle and end. Although they were exhibited together as a group, each work had its own distinct and strong identity, dealing with ideas of the human body, nature, evolution, the location of the human soul and the ability to change people's lives (if not the world), through ideas and belief.

Each film deploys an anthropological approach to recording - amassing many hours of footage for each work. The works are then edited and reconstructed to create condensed stories and portraits. The portrait-based nature of these film works provide unique, intimate insights into human nature. The exhibition presented the opportunity to review the accumulative effect of these films that usually exist autonomously and completely.

The exhibition was reviewed by Frieze magazine and featured in Time Out magazine, Flash Art magazine, Filmwaves magazine and Audio Arts.

• http://www.mattsgallery.org/artists/base...
• http://www.jordanbaseman.co.uk/