Exhibition Strategies

When I first started to engage with the rough film that I had taken over the summer I didn't know/remember what I had filmed. This gave me a bank of material that I could look at with fresh eyes but that could possibly be worthless. As I started to edit my way through I found a mixture of glimpses and atmospheric fragments. It is from these two types of film that the Cana series has developed, I was both making video's that held moments and created new ones. Cana and ADP were both pieces that felt that they held immersive qualities, both equally being about memory yet creating new moments within themselves. The glimpse work comes through with Baseball and Piana, they feel more like portraits of moments between moments. A tutor told me that he felt like Piana was more like a painting which I was happy to agree with. The latest one 'Drive' (it's rough title) is somewhere in the middle. Both playing with moments in time and evolving into a new moment which holds a more immersive stance towards the end. The one factor they all share is that they have a hypnotic quality and stem from the mundane.

These two types of film are very different from one another and both hold qualities that I'm very interested in. When I first made the first Cana film I was encouraged to continue to make films from the raw footage. By doing this I explored new ideas, learnt new techniques and started understanding the work in a more thought out and personal way. By the same token I realised that by talking to people about the work and showing them these shorts that they were obviously having different insights and reactions to the work, which in term informed my work more.

I'm now in a position where I have made the five video's and I have my exhibition space and it's now what strategies I put in place as to which pieces I show and which I don't. Which pieces hold my ideas best and which ones work well with each other. This process is something that I find most interesting in other artists but struggle to do it myself. It's a technique that I am keen to implement with the Cana series as I feel if I was to show them all they wouldn't create a solid body they would be fragments off the core of the idea. My initial idea of what will work best together is "Cana" and "Drive" (Rough title). They both work individually but I think that together that work well off of each other both harmonising and standing their own with different elements to both. Both travelling pieces of footage but both immersive and their own entities in their own right.

Drive

This is a rough demo of the latest video I've worked on. Since having a chat with Artist Blue Firth I have extended the end and shorted the middle. I'm very interested in the mundane and Americana and the start of this video plays to those interests well. The slowing of the organ and the pedestrian nature of the highway lours the viewer into a mesmeric lull. This is a conscious decision as when the video progresses it starts to change gear and builds slowly to a immersive finish. The second half of the film starts to build up a visual trick by looping and speeding up the clip. The sounds and imagery work well together as the organ feels like it's churning the video.

Drive from Matt Weir on Vimeo.

Piana

Piana came from a small moment that my sister did whilst playing the piano. It's these moments that have interested me the most throughout my art practice but it's one that's very difficult to attain. I've found photography to be the most common medium to capture these glimpses but with this short film I feel it works well. It captures a moment that would otherwise be forgotten, it's also her youth and the expression on her face that I find most memorable. It has no sound as I haven't found the right sounds to coincide with this video but this maybe a good thing as I think it may not need it. I see it more as a painting after speaking to a tutor and feel that it works well in that format.

Untitled from Matt Weir on Vimeo.

Pos.Ruff

Casa de Nada

Unfortunately mine and Pip's joint exhibition space Casa De Brujas has fallen through. After weeks of futile attempts at communication with the curator we went around there today only to find out that she had "left the country indefinitely" and the occupier of the property was in the process of "de-occupying it". This wasn't totally unexpected as it was something we felt could have happened at anytime. It has also given us the learning curve of nothing is set in stone and we ourselves are the only bankable commodity when it comes to our practice.

We have come up with the solution of exhibiting our work at Philippa's house, on Edge Lane. This works out better for us as we now have more control over the space and time. The size of the rooms are roughly the same as both Casa De Brujas and Edge Lane are old Edwardian houses. The date of the exhibition is now in flux but with a few more days behind us we should have pinned down the finer details. A momentary glitch on our exhibition.

ADP.1

ADP from Matt Weir on Vimeo.