uncast interiors

The "uncast interiors" series are explorations of the 'behind-the-scenes' making of Martin MacAnally's great unfinished film 'The Lost' and/or the possible interior scheme of his home. Spaces appear magically lit from no apparent source, elements of the grandiose faux-antique (wood panelling, chandeliers etc.) merge with the office tools of archiving (metal shelving, filing cabinets etc.) - the 'special effects' of the home of a great auteur meets the very private occupations of a recluse.

However, the images themselves and the accompanying museum style text raises question as to the images' integrity. Their multiplicity of purpose and therefore meaning confounds the viewers own craving for the revelation behind the facade. By reflecting our demands for a de-mythologising of the 'unseen' cultural icon, event or product - supposedly satisfied in the glossy pages of celebrity magazines - these retouched images hide as much as they reveal. A desire to see the domestic and working spaces the famous inhabit in an attempt to normalise their lives to our own results in an inevitable 'exoticisation' via the lens as to what we do not see.

Nothing is confirmed or denied - only imagined.

magnum opus

In Magnum Opus, I purged the film poster image of legible text, leaving only the image and empty 'text fields'. Like the images I was seeing everyday for products I didn't know or understand, these were empty signifiers - advertisements rendered redundant from their conception.

The piece also functions as a referent to the wider narrative of the film director Martin MacAnally's life that is played out in the Uncast Interiors Series. The only legible text (the names of the two stars; the director; the film's title - The Lost, and a Web address) attempts to appraise the film's existence while the trace existence of 'removed' text conceals the mystery of the film's content. Further more, the enveloping scale of the image (presented as a full size billboard in a gallery space) heightens the epic visual pretensions of The Lost's unknown narrative.

Reviews

"A plot worth taking in, from start to finish"

Douglas Britt - Houston Chronicle

"...posing the rhetorical question of who is behind the camera"

Nicholas Kersulis - Artlies

"A taut study in withholding catharsis or conclusion"

Christopher French - Art Papers