INTERFACE

REVIEW

Immediate 3

Site Gallery and Sylvester Works, Sheffield

30 July – 8 October

Reviewed by: Bianca Winter

‘Immediate 3’ is a showcase of emerging digital art produced in the North of England by graduates of less than five years. Combining pre-existing and commissioned work, the exhibition provides an accessible survey of contemporary lens-based concerns and a variety of approaches to film and video.

Using digital video to record observations, Antony Hall’s Coffee Cup Oscillator is aesthetically simple and stunning. The vision of sound pulsing through the reflective surface of coffee is mesmerising. That there may be a scientific investigation into the effect of sound travelling through liquid only becomes apparent as we notice different patterns emerging in the coffee, which seem more distinctive visually than aurally. One Lime Street is presented through six windows, aligned into three rows of two, mimicking the ‘at floor’ and ‘between floor’ conditions of a lift. The two columns seem to be a mirror image of each other; a lift with external views showing the cityscape rise and fall as though inhaling and exhaling. Whilst the register begins perfectly – people getting in and out of the lift as it is on a floor (in full frame) slowly the register diverges, splitting people in two as they enter and exit. Rose Butler and Kypros Kyprianou have tackled the technical challenges involved in multi-video projection to present this seamless hypnotic meditation.

Jason Dee adds an uncharacteristic stillness to old film footage in We’ll revisit the scenes of our youth. Footage is presented in split screen: on the left a young couple appear to be enjoying their train journey, whilst on the right a middle-aged gentleman is on a static cycle giving motion to an artificial landscape. The same landscape is whistling by the young couple on the train. The movement of the landscape serves to highlight the stillness of the couple, whose poses are static. Dee spliced digital footage together to create this uncanny video.

Using the camera as an unblinking, unresponsive eye, Stella Cape puts her performer in an awkward position. Have you ever wondered just what it is about a clown’s performance that leaves you with a sense of melancholy? In The Great Darkness a clown enacts his routine in a barren environment without the support of his ridiculous clothing and props. The thirty-minute video is a test of endurance for not only the viewer, but also the performer, who is fated to fail yet cannot stop trying. Allen Coombs sets up an illusory aesthetic in Spatial Absurdities. Using line drawings of a chair, a man and a bowler hat as props, and a line-drawn border to contain the activity, Coombs works through the logical possibilities of spatial relations between the props. Periodically an arm appears to pick the props up and rearrange them and this unexpected human presence adds a light touch to an otherwise lifeless process. The clever combination of video with an animated aesthetic prompts us to question what we think we see.

Megan Smith allows us to celebrate the visual effects of pixels and interpolation, apparent in low-resolution digital footage. The Ottawa River is a striking example of video, combining a very limited palette with lyrical movements to enable us to appreciate the shapes and forms seen, missed or extrapolated by the low fidelity digital eye.

‘Immediate 3’ successfully articulates interesting and complex notions whilst maintaining the ability of lens-based media to entertain.

Writer detail:
Bianca Winter is a final year Fine Art student at Nottingham Trent University.

hello@bianca.org.uk | www.bianca.org.uk

Venue detail:
Site Gallery
1 Brown Street, Sheffield S1 2BS

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