New Work UK: Anna Lucas

First in a new series of screenings showcasing British artists’ work. This season focuses on new works by individual artists shown in context with other works that counterpoint, reflect on or inspire it. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the artist. NWUK is presented in association with LUX.
 
Please note this screening will contain graphic imagery of dead bodies which some people may find disturbing.
 
Demonstration 50.15, Anna Lucas (2009), video, 15 mins
Demonstration 50.15 is new work by Anna Lucas produced during a Wellcome Trust-funded residency in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at the University of Oxford in 2007-9. It is a cool-hued portrait of the University’s anatomy laboratory and follows the repetitive daily activities of the mortuary technician as he embalms and prepares bodies for medical students. The work reveals his quiet dignity and diligence within an environment more often recognised for scientific breakthroughs or ethical controversies. The absence of visible flesh – due to recent laws protecting the identity of the deceased – enables the film both to maintain and collapse the myth and mystery of the space.
 
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The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes, Stan Brakhage (1971) 16mm, 32 min
‘Stan Brakhage has often described his films as documentaries, referring to his investigations of how we see, whether in experiments with cinema’s unique capacities to view the world or attempts to replicate “closed-eye” vision. In 1971, Brakhage was allowed to photograph an autopsy, a word which comes from the Greek, meaning “the act of seeing with one’s own eyes.” In the resulting difficult, intensely disturbing work, Brakhage attempts to understand death. In seeking the ultimate mystery-in asking why-he encounters the physical, anonymous human body, and in the process “sees” the limits of knowing through observation.’ Kathy Geritz The film is part of Brakhage’s “Pittsburgh trilogy”, a trio of ‘documentary’ films Brakhage made about the city’s various institutions in 1971; the other two are ‘Eyes’, about the city police, and ‘Deus Ex’, filmed in a hospital.
 
 
Anna Lucas Anna Lucas is a London based artist. Mainly working with film and video, her practice engages and develops observations of social networks and group dynamics in response to specific geographic and architectural locations. Her works foreground human interaction with the landscape and the natural environment. Her camera unobtrusively documents, distancing her subjects from the viewer, yet at the same time encourages a rigorous engagement with features of everyday life. Lucas’ work creatively integrates what could be characterised as an intuitional response to the subjects she documents, whilst still operating within a structured, cohesive framework which give her works their textured and distinctive quality. Anna Lucas’ video work is distributed by LUX.