Artist Statement
X-Tea (detail) 2009-15
I work with lens-based media, moving image, sound and light. I am fascinated by the flow and flux of energy and time and it’s complex interrelationship to human thought and perceptual processes. I am also interested in the physical context of the work; the location and site are important, and this can and often does relate in some way to the history or cultural significance of place. In response to the site or context, my works most often take the form of site-specific installation, video projection or gallery sculpture, or a combination of these approaches. My installations, sculptures and projections often incorporate renewable energy systems and seek to establish direct relationships or connections to the natural and the constructed or architectural environment, and this includes the potential interaction and interdependence between actual, perceptual and virtual worlds.
CM-A, Feb, 2017.
A fascination with temporality and its relationship to space is right at the heart of my practice-even the earliest videotapes, such as Horizontal & Vertical (1979) and The Room with a View (1982). We are suspended in time the same way that fish are suspended in water- it’s our primary medium. The way we have come to understand consciousness is inextricably bound up with temporality- we anticipate, plan, remember, and reflect. Temporality is directly involved in our sense of place too, not only in terms of physical movement- speed, pace, etc. but via history- the significance and power of a particular place. We have developed technologies to explore and enhance our participation with and engagement in time- photography freezes it, capturing momentary experiences and holding them for contemplation. The cinema, which of course is a development of photography, provides us with an even greater range of methods to explore and celebrate our preoccupation with temporality- movement, of course, but also time-lapse, slow motion, freeze frame and the “real-time” gaze of the video surveillance camera. On reflection I think that my fascination with photography has always been in relation to cinema, to the way in which these two interrelated media shed light on the processes of spatial perception, memory and time and their relationship to consciousness. Many of the cinematic works by other artists that have profoundly influenced me have directly engaged with these key themes: Mike Snow’s Wavelength, Chris Marker’s La Jetee, Steina and Woody Vasulka’s Time-Energy Objects, Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death.
Extract from an Interview with Vince Dzeikan, ‘IN DARWIN’S GARDEN’ (Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Aug-Sept, 2012)