- Synopsis for the Still Life project 2007
Stillness with Movement and Still Life with Technology are concepts I seek to investigate visually. In my practice I use video to capture still life compositions that explore these relationships. Thus creating a visual metaphor for these disparate ideas to exist in unison. My work references video art and painting to comment on a world overloaded and saturated with visual stimulation. My videos endeavor to contradict this overload by offering some respite in the singularity of real time still life. From historic to contemporary, painting to video art I am focusing my practice to create images which engage the viewer’s prolonged attention. The work encourages the viewer to re-examine their position in relation to real time and the appearance of stillness.
The importance and appreciation for a sense of time has been left by the wayside as the process of modernity gains speed. The emphasis on speed throughout history intrigues me and visually I endeavor to perform a reversal; to affirm stillness through imagery simultaneously embedding speed as an element within it. Video can be read as a medium representing speed, and yet the still camera angles in these images represent the opposite. While still life has historically been interested in freezing time and in eliminating movement, video reveals changes. In doing so a paradox arises between still moments and duration. Even though these images appear still, the visual pulse of the screen is refreshing at a rate beyond retinal perception. Then the ’speed’ in my work is mediated by the machine in the momentary transformation of visual information.
It is my interest and belief that though they are seemingly dissimilar speed and stillness exist together and create and maintain one another. My work builds on these concepts and attempts a new perspective: If we are being swept up in the excitement of the promise of technological empowerment it is through stillness we are allowed discernment, a moment for observation and contemplation.
All Text © Ocea Sellar 2007