Wastwater looking towards Great Gable and Skafell
DVD, 60mins, 2002
In this monitor based video work a postcard was bought and taken back to the place from which it was photographed then the postcard was hand held in front of the camera over the period of an hour.
The postcard used represents an idealised experience of the place it depicts. It shows a beautiful natural scene, a lake in the foreground with large mountains overlapping into the distance, there is no sign of human habitation, you can’t see the road that brought the photographer there or the car park were cars are parked up full of people eating there sandwiches or just admiring the view. The postcard gives us the opportunity to imagine ourselves out of the scene, to see a perfect unspoilt natural wilderness.
In this work the postcard attempts to supplant the original site with its mediated form only for the viewer to see glimpses of what is behind it when the fallible human hand can not hold it in precise position any longer, and the image slips, the cover is blown.
This piece was shown at Fa Projects, London
