Knowing Through Making

Knowing through Making:
Practice-based doctoral exhibition and conference

University for the Creative Arts at Epsom
10th – 22nd October 2008

Knowing through Making will reflect upon the vibrant student research culture at the University for the Creative Arts through an exhibition and conference. The conference and exhibition aim to create a dialogue between individual research projects and their methodological approaches, in order to critically reflect upon practice led scholarship in the visual arts.

The opening of Knowing through Making will be marked by keynote speaker Dr Lucy Soutter from the London College of Communication, University of Arts London. Her recent publications include, Enigmatic Spectacle: Key Strategies in Contemporary Staged Photography, Role Models.




Conference 10th Oct 12pm – 5.45 Lecture Theatre Epsom
Followed by Private View at 6pm at The Gallery at Epsom
Exhibition runs until 22nd Oct


Spaces at the conference are limited so booking is essential.
Please contact: Mary O’Hagan at the Research Office.

mohagan@ucreative.ac.uk

You Are a Very Naughty Boy! (2007)

My New video 'You Are a Very Naughty Boy!' (2007) created for Transcabaret can be viewed here

Dark smoky eyes stare at the camera and she insists to the viewer “You are a very naughty boy”. In this slightly ludicrous yet sultry performance, a dominating female solicits male masochistic pleasure: a parody of simplistic reversals of the traditional viewing scenario of the active male look and sexualized, passive female. The assertive ‘punishing’ stamp of the female lifts the shutter revealing the female object in the spotlight. For an instant, the male is indulged with a peepshow of black stockings and frills, before the shutter snaps abruptly down. Initially seductive, her performance escalates into a hysteria that is simultaneously threatening and humorous.

The work relies on the simulation of a photographic apparatus via the video camera. Thus playing with the nature of the screen, meshing the ‘making’ space with the ‘viewing’ space of the visual artwork. This simulates a ‘live’ performance whilst lending the female control of her image through the camera apparatus. You Are a Very Naughty Boy!evokes voyeuristic pleasures of the cinema and the burlesque performance and yet intervening in familiar codes of spectatorship as the screen of projection intermittently becomes a violent shutter to the peep show.

Showroom 3: Trans-Cabaret

Showroom 3: Trans-cabaret a live art and performance
event transgressing notions of cabaret, variety, and burlesque.Trans-cabaret features live art, performance, video,
burlesque, one toone intimate exchanges, and interventions by featured
artists:

Annette FosterTransgression: Transgressa

Tom MarshmanFinding My Inner Cowboy

Jiva Parthipan Al Queda Ballet

Lazlo Pearlman Le Grande Bouffe

Benjamin Mitchell "Daddy Loves His Job (Don't WorryPrincess)" AKA "Gay Man's Frug"

Katherine Nolan a live art and performance "You are a very naughty boy!" (2007)

Rachel Parry Baba Yaga's Bastard child

Sam Rose Between One and Another: Untitled (Work InProgress)

With Special Guests.......
The Deville Dolls Burlesque Troupewho will behostesses throughout theevening, as well as making a special guestperformance.

DJ Lord Ivor Hardshafte Gramophonic/ Jukebox Masterwill be playing the finest tunes from the 1920's-1950's throughout the
evening.

And added extra's......
Look out for...... Chocolate cigarette hostesses.
Let your hair down and dance into the early hours withTrans-cabaret 'club' 12:00- 2:00 a.m.

Audiences are encouraged to dress to impress invintage, burlesque, ordrag !

For further information go to
www.myspace.com/transcabaret

Visual Deflections

In collaboration with artist colleague, I have put out a call for submissions. Visual Deflections is a showcasing opportunity for new and emerging artists working in film/video/moving image. The project aims to stage screening(s) to provide an opportunity to engage with contemporary artists working with the moving image

Work will be selected around the idea of Visual Deflections, which infers the disruption of a straightforward linear story through distortions of the time, movement and space of the film/video. The concept may also suggest an interruption of the gaze where desires and identifications are intrusively reflected back to the viewer.

Sugar Lips (2007)

Angela Carter Symposium

I spoke at an Angela Carter Symposium in University of Exeter before christmas. It was a great conference, there was real enthusiam for the subject and the atmosphere was relaxed enough that people felt comfortable to speak. Both of which made for lively discussion.

I screened the video piece, I get it 5 times a day and discussed in it in the context of the literary construction of the gaze in Carter's 'The Bloody Chamber'. There were some very interesting comments on the work. Paricularly interesting to screen the work to an entirely female, and I assume feminist audience.

Charlotte Croft commented that she felt uncomfortable, due to the disorientating effect of the mirror - before even consdiering gender issues. (As a film maker, she was able to detect this)There was also comments that an uncomfortable feeling was evoked because the viewer knew the kind of (controlling? erotic? masculinsed?) gaze that they were subejcting me to. (Informed by the feminist knowledge of that particular audience).

I get it 5 Times a Day

I get it 5 times a day is a homoursly ironic performance of a clichéd seduction. The viewer is directly addressed with playful eye contact and flirtatious body language, such that they can’t help but believe this flattery is for them. Suddenly they become implicated within the frame of image as the luscious red fruit is dangled in front of them. The nature of the gaze becomes unstable as the screen seems to flicker between a translucent and reflective surface The distortion of the pictorial space has a disorientating effect, so that the erotic pleasure offered to the viewer is challenged by the frustration of the urge to decipher the viewing apparatus. The uncomfortable pleasures of I get it 5 times a day are an inquiry into self-gratification in the image, in an increasingly mediated culture.

testing!

testing