Alex Kershaw, Flat Screen. Beaconsfield Gallery
Has the Beaconsfield turned into a cafe, maybe. On entering the food on offer is much better advertised than the art. I’ve come to see Alex Kershaw’s videos.
“Alex Kershaw is based in Sydney and works with video and photography to generate unexpected relationships between people and their terrain. Often spending extended periods researching locations and characters, Kershaw’s quiet activism blurs the boundaries between everyday activity and devised performance as ordinary people become involved in the work.”
Shocked to find his work is on a screen in the cafe, and only one of the three I was expecting, they are on a rolling programme. Blurb for the one on show this week at end. Had to watch his work through people wolfing down their organic lunches and supping their lattes. Could not hear film… Couldn’t decipher video at first, are they acting in their religiuos procession, or are they acting out of this, acting away from their procession. Is this a documentary of something happening anyway, There is a scene with pink wool, being wrapped around trees and then people by themselves, beautiful and intriguing and then goes to a procession that must be traditional, this contrast of ritual designed by the artist to one designed by 1000 years of culture is interesting. Video excellent quality. Then scenes of work, the ritual movements of working, picking, raking and sowing. I just read the blurb, yes this is it, a video made from weaving work, religious and artist devised movements. What ones have value and meaning? Documentary with performative acts, acts done for the camera versus acts done for society and religion versus acts done without thinking (raking?) . Documentary and yet art actiions all in one film, accross one video surface. The only food for thought in the Beaconsfield Cafe.
Phi Ta Khon Project, 2008/09
17’ 33” single screen version
21 July - 9 August
In 2008 Kershaw travelled to Dansai, a small town in Loei Province of Northern Thailand and worked with the local council and community during their annual Phi Ta Khan festival. Translated as ‘ghosts follow people’, Phi Ta Khon combines animist, Brahmin and Buddhist traditions to articulate bonds between the dead and the living, between sexual and agricultural fertility and between the community and their spirit-infested natural world.
The Phi Ta Khon Project, orchestrates a series of displacements in the spirit of Magic Realism, weaving harvest landscapes and documents of the festival with choreographed sequences in which local farmers, food vendors and council employees are the actors and challenging traditional roles and meanings.
http://www.beaconsfield.ltd.uk/projects/alexkershaw/index.html
