Sam Taylor Wood

Crying Men

This is a photograph of Hayden Christensen crying it is from a series of photographs of famous men crying for the camera. These photographs are very similar to the videos by Lydal Jones. Like the images by Lydal Jones they explore the emotion of crying, with these photo's you also can't tell what has caused these men to cry.

Gillian Wearing

Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say

'I Have Been Certified as Mildly Insane!' (1992-3)

This is a photograph from a series of photographs called 'Signs...' The series of photographs shows the responses which Wearing elicited from passers-by, whom she selecte at random, and asked to write their thoughts on a piece of paper.

Gillian Wearing

Confess All On Video. Don't Worry You Will Be in Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian Version II (1994)

In these videos a series of participants responding to an advertisement in Time Out magazine, took up wearings offer to make their confessions on camera.
From these videos Wearing raises questions about the motives behind a confession. Disguised the participants were to tell the truth about things to which they would never admit in daily life. At the same time they could invent flamboyant lies without being caught.
I think this is a good way of getting insight into the things that people keep secret and carry with them in their daily lives without telling anyone. It also gives an insight into the types of lies that people make up, even though you never find out if they had lied or not.

Lyndal Jones

Tears For What Was Done (2002-2005)

This is a series of works that focuses on the manifestation of emotion and the ways it is culturally represented.
The work shows men crying for all different reasons, some know they are being watched, some don't.
While the work is shown there is no background that could anchor the tears in a particular incident, no words spoken that could explain the situation, no music to manipulate our actions or emotions.

I find it interesting looking into the way people show emotions and what type of emotions people express. I think that this would be an interesting subject to consider whilst thinking about the subject for my video.

Dryden Goodwin

Dilate (2003)

Dilate is a panoramic video and sound installation which encircles the viewer with projection screens. The screens pan in and out of significant details of immersive 360 screens, reflecting how our shifting sense of self informs our perception of space and visa versa. "Faced with an open vista of a majestic natural landscape, we can feel liberated, isolated or paralysed; as part of the city, anonymous, identified or alienated; in the domesticity of our homes, safe, confined or overwhelmed; in a virtual network, empowered, remote or victimised." Dilate is dramatic and multifaced in its flow of images.I really like the sound of this installation and the way that the viewer becomes enclosed, surrounded by these panoramic views. This piece is also quite sculptural as it can be viewed from a distance and from inside the screens.

This is a still of a video taken from a scene in the move 'American Beauty'. When we first started this project it was the first thing that came to mind, in the film it seems a bit stupid, but I think it's actually quite good. I think it's the simplicity of it that makes me like it so much, a plastic bag moving with the direction of the wind; in the film it is described as "the most beautiful thing in the world". I was reminded of this scene again when I was in town the other day, the wind was very blustery and there was this plastic bag just blowing around with some leaves that had fallen from the trees around. I think it would be good to film something that you had no control over what was happening or what the outcome would be.

Steve McQueen

Deadpan (1997)

Steve McQueens trademark has become his use of extreme and unexpected camera angles. This video is reminiscent of a typical Buster Keaton mise-en-scene, McQueen stages a scene where the gable end of a barn is crashing down over him; the open window of the barn wall falls around him, with him able to walk away unscathed. The different angles focussing on different parts of his body: his face which does not flinch as the barn(world) collapses around him. At the end is the dramatic shot of the bottom half of his legs, which is shot as the shadow of the wall descends; and at the end of the impact is a little raised cloud of dust which then falls again. Even though I have not seen the film in person I really like the sound of it, how the clever camera angles make it look very dramatic but simple. You would expect at the end to be a loud crashing sound however there is just a little cloud of dust is formed and raised slightly of the ground. This is unexcepted and I think it is what makes the scene so dramatic.

The essence and structure of Douglas Gordons work is heavily based on opposites: good/bad, saved/damned, right/wrong, light/dark. He also likes to manipulate his images to change how we perceive them by layering images, changing the speed at which something is played, using mirrors/reflection and multiple screens. Touching also on recognition/repetition and time/memory. His work seems to explore the viewers psychological relationship with the moving image in his videos. Most of his work seem to have psychological elements, leaving the viewers to think about the psychological affect it has on them.

Douglas Gordon

24 Hour Psycho(1993)
This is the work that got Douglas Gordon known around the world, with this he aslo won the Turner Prize.
For "24 Hour Psycho" Gordon took Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film and slowed it down from 24 frames per second, the cinematic standard speed, to only 2 frames a second. This meant that in the gallery the film would play for approximately 24 hours, where it was played in the centre of a dark room.



Something Between My Mouth and Your Ear (1994)
Something..(1994) offers a possible into the formation of the artist's character. The work is installed in a blue room, which grows lighter and darker according to the time of the day and the intensity of the light outside. Inside of this room are some of the first sounds that Gordon may have heard, they are taken from songs that have been chosen by the artist from the Top 50 that his mother may have been listening to while she was pregnant with him.



Self Portrait (kissing with Scopolamine) (1994)
In Self Portrait...(1994)Gordon confronts his own reflection. He is shown apparently passing on a 'truth drug' to his reflected self. For this he closed his eyes which acted as blindness. Scopolamine is a drug that used to be used for interrogation as it didn't allow the interrogated to lie.
The image was then shown as a negative projection; a flipside of reality. Everything we know turned upside down/inside out. It raises questions; What is the reverse side of self-reflection? What is the opposite of truth?



Between Darkness and Lightness (1997)
Between...(1997) stages a confrontation of 2 films; The Song of Bernadette (Henry King 1943) and The Exorcist(1973). Both films and shown simultaneously on either side of a single screen. They are played at the same time, together and on the same picture plane. Showing these images like this pits the Devil against the Virgin Mary; good versus evil.



Through a Looking Glass (1999)
Through...(1999) is a scene showing Robert De Niro from the film Taxi Driver. In the scene De Niro rehearses his draw in front of a mirror with the famous line "You talking to me?". Gordon projects this scene and its mirrored image on either side of the gallery space, unsure of what is real and waht is reflection, or who is the suject and who is the object. The viewer is physically and psychologically trapped in a virtual hall of mirrors between the threatening De Niro.

Willie Doherty

Willie Doherty's video work of the man forever running creates a sense of fear and of being trapped. The fear is shown through his facial expressions, the man is continuously running, but never reaches his destination. This is as a result of the film being played on a continous loop.
Words that come to mind are: fear, trapped, lost, panic, terror, horror, escape and desperation.