Screen Used (2016)
Some images & the videos from the solo show Screen Used, Patricia Fleming Projects November 18 – December 17 2016. All photography by Ruth Clark.
Here’s the PR:
The current exhibition at Patricia Fleming Projects is Screen Used, a solo exhibition of new video and prints by Jane Topping.
Topping’s work examines the ever-developing relationship between your body and your screen.
A heady combination of physical closeness, shining image, endless variety, availability and manipulation breeds a familiarity and intimacy between the viewer, the screen and the moving image.
Viewers are closer to their object of desire than ever, and Topping seeks to test if this closeness amplifies or frustrates feelings of intimacy and ownership. The net and the screen are together creating a new form of desire, of love, which has yet to be clearly defined, it is this that the artist seeks to understand.
Jane Topping graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 1999. Solo exhibitions include: The Glasgow School of Art; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow and Intermedia at The C.C.A. Recent group exhibitions and screenings include: Glasgow Short Film Festival (2016), Transit #3 and everything crooked will become straight, Glasgow (2016), FILM OPEN, Spike Island, Bristol, Eastside Projects, Birmingham, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, S1 Artspace, Sheffield, ICA, London (2015), 31st International Short Film Festival, Hamburg (2015), Ripples on the Pond, GoMA, Glasgow (2015-16) and 12th International Festival Singes de Nuit, Institute Finlandais, Paris (2015).
Topping was on the jury of the No Budget Competition at the 32nd Hamburg International Short Film Festival (2016) and is currently Programme Leader of Fine Art BA (Hons) at the University of Cumbria Institute of the Arts.
Thank you to Clare Stephenson, Michael Coombs, Jake Tilbury, Iain Topping, Robert Williams, Mark Wilson, Martin Fowler, Patti Lean and Fine Art Students of The University of Cumbria Institute of the Arts.
FYI this image is my dad’s desk at work which was decorated on the occasion of his wedding in 1971.
The viewer’s relationship to the screen, as both a barrier to and conductor of desire and sensual longing, is interrogated in recent videos such as Screen Used (10 mins, 2016) and Virtual Reality Porn Female P.O.V. Kitten Edition (9 mins, 2016). Of particular interest in Screen Used are the many user-generated tropes of video-making found on sites such as YouTube, in which touch and sexual desire are foregrounded while remaining within the site’s rules. Use yer headphones for this one pls…
Virtual Reality Porn Female P.O.V. Kitten Edition (8:26 mins) examines the ever-developing relationship between your body and your screen.
A heady combination of physical closeness, shining image, endless variety, availability and manipulation breeds familiarity and intimacy between the viewer, the screen and the moving image.
Viewers are closer to their object of desire than ever, and this film seeks to test if this closeness amplifies or frustrates feelings of intimacy and ownership. The net and the screen are together creating a new form of desire, of love, which has yet to be clearly defined and it is this that Virtual Reality Porn Female P.O.V. Kitten Edition seeks to understand…
The viewer’s relationship to the screen, as both a barrier to and conductor of desire and sensual longing, is interrogated in recent videos such as Screen Used (10 mins, 2016) and Virtual Reality Porn Female P.O.V. Kitten Edition (9 mins, 2016). Of particular interest here are the many user-generated tropes of video-making found on sites such as YouTube, in which touch and sexual desire are foregrounded while remaining within the site’s rules.
Use yer headphones for this one pls.