Exhibition TextImages

L*a*b is set in a dark room, a bedroom. Actually it’s a small shitty bedsit, which folds out into an any-which-way-room: a study, a kitchen, a dining room and a boudoir. The room is shared between a couple of guys, who to a greater or lesser degree love each other. The space is imaginary. The action takes place in the middle of the night, a particular kind of moment that affords the collapse of the past and the future into an immediate intensity drawing together and swallowing up subjecthood, objecthood (and anything in between) into a blackhole moment. The kind of moment in which nothing is more important than the thing one is looking at, even if the thing is masked in darkness or delirium. From such a vantage point, one is not only in the moment, one is the moment: A paranoid self-destructive semi-conscious fantasy. A drunken negotiation of an intimately familiar group of objects. Being in love.

L*a*b is a two channel video consisting of a collage of different kinds of footage, most of which were made through processes of animation and 3D modelling, with some bits of filmed performance, and other bits of found footage. Almost all of the footage alludes to the representation of domestic space albeit through the optic of still life photography, pornography or TV sit com. L*a*b consists of disjointed fragments of image and sound. Like the film’s protagonists, the viewer is unable to directly see the thing that they are looking at and instead must actively construct a sense of space and time.

Paul Simon Richards (UK, 1981) work explores the potential of thought to make present in language that which cannot be experienced. Using mainly spoken word performance and video, Richards’ work draws together immersive narratives that incorporate elements of spectacular entertainment and moments of enlightened consciousness that come about during mundane daily tasks. Richards is the winner of the 2015 Fokus video art prize and took part in the Lux Artist’s associate programme (2011-2012). Solo exhibitions include those at AND/OR, London (forthcoming); Nile Sunset Annex, Cairo (2015); Amer Abbas, Vienna (2010). His work has been included in group exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen; the Showroom, London; The Jerwood Space, London; Lost and Found, Amsterdam.

With kind support from the Elephant Trust and Arts Council England.