Two rows of five screens are fixed in tarred timber structures which recall crude agricultural devices or fragments of farm buildings. These panoramas face the centre of a space where back-to-back chapel pews provide seating for viewers. Giant stalks of straw (35mm slide projections) texture the walls of the space. The installation suggests residual metaphysical significance in a number of habits, rituals and activities connected with food and agriculture.
The video/sound element of the work takes the form of a series of set-pieces synchronised across five screens:
CAUL: the extraction of a single horizontal blue cord from a moist 'intestinal' tangle;
GRACE: the preparatory smoothing of a tablecloth across all five screens;
SHARES: a central furrow in a patch of ground is set alight, whilst on each side furrows are scraped out with bizarrely modified garden tools, and 'planted' with blue cord;
HEART: against the background of the smooth tablecloth a cauliflower is noisily dismembered whilst 'damaged' produce is presented to the viewer on either side;
CORN: a journey into a ripe cornfield, following blue cords down into the darkness of the stems
Funding and Exhibition details
Commissioned and funded by Moviola for Video Positive 1989
Production assistants: Graham Gaunt, Frances Hegarty
Cornfield: Pearson's Farm, Wentworth
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