Still Life Spinning by Tim Sandys Renton

(Note: requires sound)

This work was shot in the interior of 9 North Pallant, a nondescript neo-georgian building that became the focus of intense local debate after plans emerged for its' demolition in order to make way for a new wing of Pallant House Art Gallery.

This building therefore represents the battle lines drawn between traditionalists and modernists. The video, shot weeks before the bulldozer arrived, is also a documentation of a space used for years as a council office. The marks on the wall (shown in close up) were made by repeated replacing of files and folders on shelves, and express complex hidden narratives and memories. They resemble drawn marks of the type made so often by the artist Cy Twombly; gestural abstract marks which relate to the body and the space.

The two outer screens are 'documentary style'; cool, observant, paced, mechanical; the camera is neutral. The centre screen, by contrast, is visceral and bodily; you feel slightly dizzy watching it, the sound of the spinning is like a heart-beat, the body of the camera-man is not only implicit, but felt! The stills, when they pause for breath, resemble impressionist paintings rather than documentary images, feelings of spaces in motion, blurred moments in time, empty interiors made up of light and colour.

(normally shown as a 3 screen video installation, on VHS, 7 minutes looped).

Click on image below to download Quicktime.