9 March - 27 April 2019
Exploring Anna Lucas' collaborative practice in film and photography, bringing together new and existing work. This exhibition brings together a selection of Anna Lucas’s early and new work in film and video. Much of the artist’s work involves collaboration and participatory practice. Her work within gallery education has provided opportunities for experimentation beyond the studio, resulting in the films Lost (2000), View (2003), Seventh Heaven (2006) and Things that had stories rubbed out(2010). The exhibition takes its title from the newly commissioned work One Second Feature (four) (2019), the long narrow photographic print which fills the expanse of the gallery space.
The exhibition takes its title from the newly commissioned work One Second Feature (four)(2019), the long narrow photographic print which fills the expanse of the gallery space. As a monumental material object, it invites the viewer to walk alongside it in order to see the work in its entirety. Like a film which presents a series of images one after the other over time, the work becomes a moving image through the act of looking.
Through shared looking, Lucas uses her lens to understand people’s different perspectives and environments. She is currently exploring the term ‘along siding’ in her work with other artists and individuals, using objects and images in a conversation of collective making. This exhibition includes works made with the artist Alice Walton, including the film and print edition Elektra(2019).
The layout of the exhibition One Second Feature will change over time. Lucas has transformed one part of The Gallery into an ‘active studio’, where the space operates as a film, photography and dance studio, offering the viewer the opportunity to observe different artists’ practices in process. At scheduled times over the course of the exhibition, Lucas and other artists will move artworks through a series of interventions and events which explore participatory process and responsive practice.
Upon seeing the Elektra as part of the exhibition I joined an artist led workshop that Anna and Alice had put together called Performed gesture for film
The film Elektra enacts a simple gesture of turning pages of appropriated images of a staged dance performance in 1960’s. The movement and interaction with these images becomes a mesmerising act of quiet shared activity, of influence, close looking and touch.
What happens when these activities are learnt, multiplied, and performed collectively?
Working with a limited-edition artwork-publication produced as a companion piece to Elektra, participants are invited to take part in a responsive session in which we explore the filmed gesture through re-enactment, shared influence and close looking as a collective act. This will be a relaxed and playful but focussed session towards a possible sharing or filmed outcome.
A willingness to commit to the whole session and participate with an open and inclusive attitude alongside others, is essential.
The experience will take place in The Gallery during opening hours so may be encountered by visitors.
Working in a collective with many different people studying a range of things from fine art, dance and gallery studies.
All coming together to work with a printed publication which features in the film Elektra. Consisting on folding and changing the prospectus of the publication.
Through the collective we formed pairs and worked in those pairs to mimic and respond on the actions of the film.
My experience of this was very calming and also working alongside another person who has their own ideas and opinions towards the action taken upon viewing and working with the publication.
We then as a group formed an orderly line side by side while Anna and Alice filmed the actions from above using a camera with tripod propped on a Perspex piece with wheels so they could glide along in one smooth motion, we continued to perform with the publications.
We were filmed a second time but this time the camera and the tripod and the Perspex were stationary, we each placed our publication onto a black piece of Perspex one by one and continued to do so until we were instructed to stop.
Overall I felt that my actions were predetermined as the publication was already folded in a certain way so this meant when filming it hindered the motion that I could produce with the page.