Curated by Joshua Lockwood
In association with LUX.
For the fourth screening of this season, Bonington Gallery is pleased to present four films by: Ursula Mayer, Laure Prouvost, Rachel Reupke, and Matthew Richardson.
The selected films explore formal exchange within relationships – whether these are between actors in the films – or directed at us, the viewer.
In Mayer’s film, the ambiguous melodrama continually addresses an ambivalent ‘you’. The indirect narrative adopted by Mayer leaves the viewer left unclear as to who is being addressed; are they referring to each other? Could they be addressing us as the viewer? Perhaps they are talking to themselves?
Comparatively, the ‘you’ in Prouvost’s film seduces the viewer. Offering inviting and pleasant images, which we are shown only briefly. The images are interspersed with a sharp intake of breath, contributing to the creation of a sensory and seductive viewing experience.
In Reupke’s film, a man and woman meet for a drink in several nondescript locations, the same actors playing differing characters. The scenes are drawn out, creating the illusion that we are looking at a 2D image. The lack of action and dialogue within the film is used by Reupke to create a void; into which other emotions can be projected.
Throughout Richardson’s High Definition video, a male protagonist is observed, followed and conversed with, across a variety of quotidian London locations. The video picks up and loses narrative threads amidst an accidental, junk-experience, this is made further ambiguous by the video’s lack of sound. The blurry, yet intimate portrait, begets social documentary or a make-believe fashion shoot, in an illusory location. It could be understood as as a product that unilaterally emerges from fictions of: a social subgroup, a highly self-aware friendship, or a city in its own right.
Image: MATTHEW RICHARDSON, Untitled, 2015, digital still, HD video. Courtesy of the artist.