David Steans and Hardeep Pandhal describe their practice as “making films whose production also generates performances, writing, drawings and hand-crafted costumes and props.” For the Morphic Resonance exhibition visitors are presented with a suite of such props and costumes.
The works have been generated from their current project The Vessel and Eye, based upon an invented initiation rite. Taking influence from ethnography and anthropology the artists seek to invent their own imagined iconography involving elements of violence, the mythical and the ridiculous. Their aesthetic is somewhat archaic but the sense of secrecy and exclusion pervading the installationequally calls up contemporary associations from fraternities to the freemasons. The costumed figures in the space brandish video cameras; highlighting the potential for performance, and moreover raising notions of witness and mediation involved in recent social ills from the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib to happy slapping.
The Vessel and Eye is an ongoing project that continues as part of ESA’s UNITED. During this second phase Steans and Pandhal will contrive and perform the invented initiation rite behind closed doors, later displaying only the related artefacts publicly.
www.esaweb.org.uk
www.xymphora.co.uk
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In foreground: 'The Bladder Taps Lens Pack'. Background: 'Leg, Arm, Head'
David at the private view
Hardeep working in the space at PSL
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