Hannah Perry
ZM
I want to talk about the video works in this show. I was more drawn to the videos (I say video but they were almost solely audio with subtitles) not just because I am a video hoe, but because I found the way I met the videos in the space such a beautiful treat; it was like slipping into a warm pocket. Horizontal screens are so snug and strangely an underused format for presenting videos in gallery spaces (but I like it). I put my phone in my pocket and stood in front of the screen swaying slightly, edging closer and closer as I found my balance drifting. It wasn't linear but it took me somewhere. Not sure where, but it was definitely a different place to the place it started.
Narrative and art have a pretty tenuous relationship yknow and I like the way they slowly rub against each other. I like it when artworks tread the line between definite clarity and abstraction (in the context of meaning). Narrative is a moveable value, it's a subjective liquid state and when it's not linear there's something familiar and intimate about it. The narrative in this show felt like I was sleepy and in a room listening to other people chat, like small talk, as I slowly drifted in between sleep and consciousness. If I was cleverer I'd say something about the politics of meaning and the way thought is represented in space, but I'm not, so I won't. But the main space made me very passive. I took things in, I listened, I only touched the pvc curtain because no one else was in the room, it was dreamy and slow and delicious in that way.
There was a little room at the end though, and it was all dark and there was a projector playing a film on all these sheer curtain divider layers (there were the same kind of space dividers in the main space, but they were red and leathery and made it feel like you were emerging from a womb. The sheer curtains made the space bigger and watery suddenly very liquid). It was less slow (just a bit faster), more aggressive but still gentle. I think I liked it less but only just, only because the sound pieces made me feel like I was being gently woken.
