Installation, mixed media:

Click the keyhole image below to view the animation

The inspiration for this piece of work stemmed from an exploration of The New Cooperage Building, royal William Yard, Plymouth,Devon; this was to be the site for this year's exhibition of over 50 artists. I found myself unable to move through certain doors and bending down to peer through the keyholes. As a result of this experience, I photographed these keyholes and not the spaces beyond. Keyholes play a significant part in our lives; those of us who hold the keys are gatekeepers, both in the public and private spheres. Some doors are closed, spaces exclude, whilst others are open and inclusive. This work invites the viewer to consider a re-presenting of these pictures.

There is an animated projection of keyholes against an open book.The animated sequence allows the viewer to see beyond each keyhole, no keys are required. Moving through these pictures represents an absence of physical limitations; whilst the viewer’s own presence is located within the room. These keyholes are at once their own origin and destination, the viewer is both included and excluded from the spaces such images represent. How long do we continue to desire to know what is beyond the next keyhole? What if, like layers of memory, keyholes only serve our curiosity as long as their function holds relevance?

Being Given

Installation, mixed media:

Click on the image below to view this animation.

At the end of this corridor, there is a door one cannot move through. There is a reciprocal series faces on the other side of the keyhole. These faces are stills from videos, which have been appropriated from the Internet click here to visit the site

The images have previously been installed as a video installation in another gallery. The Internet is a space allowing for private consumption in the comfort of our own dwellings, the gallery is for the public. What motivates people to willingly share their intimacy when such a medium can afford them anonymity? One may consider all works of art to be exhibitionistic; perhaps private consumption is just a socially constructed notion of what is already public.



These images appear for one twenty-fifth of a second and are gone (one frame), only to be replaced two seconds later by another until the cycle repeats. There is a snippet of sound, barely audible, are they parts of words or utterances? Who are these people, what truth can we read from these fleeting expressions? Are we really that socially estranged from one another?

How does it now feel to be the voyeur? Looking through the keyhole to the screen presented before us, we are invisible to these images and yet aware of the presence of others as we turn our backs to them. As one turns away, this act of looking is left for a moment imprinted as a retinal trace before fading away. This image is now an act on the part of the viewer; only he or she can fix the image and in this sense, take it away.

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