Selected ll sees the 2011 Film London Jarman Award shortlisted artists, including Ed Atkins; Clio Barnard; Claire Hooper; Anja Kirschner & David Panos and Laure Prouvost among others – each select an emerging artist filmmaker to tour the UK. For the second in our series of interviews with the chosen we talk to Canadian artist Una Knox about her filmic exploration of architectural space, memory and experience.
Tell us about the work, 'A kind of correspondence'. When was it made, and is part of a larger body of work?
A kind of correspondence was made in the summer of 2010. It is part of a larger body of work in a way, because it comes out of a greater interest of mine in connections between architectural space, memory and experience and how we perceive, store and access bodies of knowledge.
In the film a pair of twins brothers amble through a museum absently surveying the works while discussing a subject which is seemingly unrelated- what was the location and why the choice of the museum as location?
The museum space presents the act of seeing and the architecture of display. The fact that they are twins is a clue to the space they are in. The sculptures and facades that surround them are all casts of original objects; they are in an archetypal Victorian Cast Court. I was interested in the moment when two people or two objects, which appear to be identical, separate and are seen as unique. Their conversation is about a band whose member’s split and try to go it solo as a way to reference this split in a humorous way.
The title "a kind of correspondence" refers to a line in the dialogue regarding the unspoken communication between John Lennon and Sean Lennon, as if they were twins…
The phrase came out of this same question of similarity, uniqueness but more importantly the waves of cultural comebacks of style, ideas and stories. A kind of unspoken communication across generations, the way ‘looks’ (style) are picked up, change, gain or loose meanings. How do we see or not see the cultural references of the past, how do we appropriate styles and stories, it is a kind of correspondence.
Is this dialogue also a comment on fandom and the obsessive collation of knowledge around pop icons like the Beatles?
You could relate it to someone who has a belief about something that they have not experienced first hand.
What are you working on next?
I am making photographs and working on a couple of new moving image works, one about misdiagnosis and slope stabilization as the starting point to think about narrative as transformation.
www.unaknox.com
Una has a solo show at www.orgallery.org until May 19th in Vancouver and a group show opening at Wysing Arts Centre, June 9th.
