A stop motion animation video made in collaboration with John Beagles. Black and white, 10:55mins duration, 2013.
We have an abiding interest in the allegorical and critical potential of playing with habitual ideas central to the mythology of art. This includes notions such as authenticity, originality, political agency, the sketchbook as locus of creativity and the studio as site of alienated production. This was explored in earlier works such as ‘Dub’l introoder’ (Transmission, Glasgow 2001) where we presented an installation-fiction of our studio, and also in ‘Unrealised Dreams’ (Venice Biennale 2003) where ‘failed’ projects and satirical sketchbook ‘fantasies’ became the subject of the work. Such ideas were picked up in a different way in the video ‘Two Fine Examples of British Dentistry’ (2009) in which we once again assumed the identity of the rarefied dandy posing in the studio.
In ‘Spam Mush Dust’ (2013) we returned to a more explicit reengagement with such ideas and once again made work that centred upon a pair of doppelganger figures. In this case it is two 30cm tall stop motion animation figures seen in various states of cognitive constipation, negligible action and full blown inertia within a scale model studio, complete with tiny versions of our paintings and sculptures. There are paintings featuring a blase face logo, sculptures of teeth and a number of priapic robots. This stop motion animation work explored the porous relationship between a seemingly disengaged studio practice, focused upon the production of art objects through the repetitive use of a limited number of motifs, and broader forces at work in the world.
This video has been screened at the following venues:
'Luminous Latitudes' touring programme in 2015 including screenings at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (July 2015), the Alchemy Film Festival (April 2015) and the Glasgow Film Theatre (March 2015).
'The Art of Drawn Movements' Glasgow Film Theatre, 3rd May 2014. (Part of the Norman Mclaren Centenary Festival)
It also formed part of our submission to the Margaret Tait Award when we were shortlisted in 2014. This video is distributed internationally by VTape, Toronto, Canada.
