Christopher Mathews (ii)


Drawing on my experience in popular music and dance, I here work with the music video format to explore its particular performativity. Untitled: Video Portraits (2017) are together studies which engage with the music video as a format at the centre of pop culture. With these works I am interested in iconoclasm, a critical engagement with technique and the formal properties of popular media. Whilst drawing on certain familiar values of the music video (in terms of rhythm, editing, length and addressal of audience) I intend to re-focus on performance within the medium. The videos are played without the sound so that the subject, the body and its gestures, becomes more present; the identity of the music is present only through its embodiment. By masking the gender of the singer and the placing of the (white mid-30s) male body in relation to the music and its performance, I aim to highlight the codes of gender and performance of sexualities.

Comments

  1. formed viewMay 3, 2023 at 8:35 AM

    Saying hello and happy to discuss more the work or any of my pieces as I tend to start from an autobiographical relationship to dance history in my artworks. www.formedview.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

comments are now disabled for this dialogue

Popular posts from this blog

Demeter Dykes

Image
As a mature woman my work is the result of frustrations in relation to others’ expectations and misconceptions of me. Taking up space, unapologetically, has allowed a performative version of myself to emerge. I am interested in this commitment to performativity by mature women on social media sites. My images are made quickly and with materials and props that are to hand. The resulting photographs include filters and digitally drawn elements that build a persona, and my working process can be seen as a playground for the exploration of potential irreverent storytelling, both real and imagined. The swirling farrago of sensations that is menopause slaps you in the face, hard, and lets you know, unequivocally, that you are on a one-way street with no turning circle at the end of it. So, having less life ahead of me than there is behind compels my heels to dig into the earth so that the dizzying swiftness with which I am travelling along this one-way street, towards the exit from which th
Read more

Rachael Rutherford

Image
The interests within my practice at large lie with portrayals of the body and how we heal through and with them. This has often been framed within the female body and it’s mis/treatment within healthcare settings.Using textiles and sculptural techniques, the nature of performance and self-portrayal comes through in the form of costume creation. The costume allows for sculptural elements to overtake the human form and in the context of my own practice, takes the internal and visualises it on the external. Thinking through the work as a visual form and way of healing, textile coverings allow the self-portrayal to embody something beyond the human form, a monstrous re-imagining of the self. For me, the performative aspect comes through within the use of video as documentation of the wearing of the costume. The creatures created exist within these videos as a way to create a barrier between the self and the audience, while creating an intimacy between the costume and its wearer that gener
Read more

Esther Sabetpour

Image
I am a London based photographer, artist and storyteller of Scotish - Iranian parentage. I explore transformation, through intuative self portraiture and embodied performance. I work with with notions of identity using environments which reflect my phycological, physical or emotional landscape. Using photo montage, moving image and performance in my self portrait process, which began in 1998. As a photographer and burns survivor, my self portrait process boosts my welbeing emotionally and physically. This liberating spiritual process enables me to embody and interpret potent feelings and themes I feel trapped, which I cannot seem to be express through words. Through the repetion (and recordings) of often slight, slow, intuitive movements, I begin to experince another relationship to my self and stories. The process enables me to tune in to my feelings and make contact with layers of trauma within my body. In 2017 I began a dance based embodied movement practice. This practice enabled m
Read more