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| Gordon Culshaw |
| gordonculshaw@hotmail.com |
| http://www.gordonculshaw.net |
| I am interested in modes of cultural epresentation and ways in which individuals choose to create their own personal reality by relating themselves to different combinations of cultural artefacts. With the breakdown of the subject/object dialectic, we now, wittingly or unwittingly, increasingly rely on technology and the objects it creates as a means to define ourselves as subjects. Much of my work is informed by Flusser’s idea that ‘although technology is a tool which does what we want it to do, we can only want what technology can do’. Much of my recent work involves an examination of iconic movies and TV shows in a way that attempts to understand how they might have shaped and created a particular sense of cultural identity. What’s the Story? youtube link: https://youtu.be/PgvsxzSFOn8 The title of the submitted video, “What’s the story?” is quizzing the newsreader about the news he is reading. “What’s it about?” “Is it a true story?” “Whose truth?” Or maybe, “What’s going on?” “Why are you saying this?” With the newsreader’s words removed, we are left only with his facial expressions. At times there is direct eye contact, at other times there isn’t. His demeanour shifts from intense to jovial, from compassionate to waggish as he reads the words prepared for him by unseen editors. Perhaps his body language is the one mode of communication he can use to express his own thoughts and opinions. Watching the short video we might ponder the type of stories which have prompted any given facial expression, whether he believes in the story he is reading or indeed whether the same set of facial expressions are used in a totally random sequence every day of the week. Perhaps the piece alludes to the possible implications of a news vacuum where we lose faith in the established media outlets and search for alternative sources of information; the implications for a society where anybody and everybody feels empowered to produce their own stories and no story can be verified. |
| Upcoming exhibitions include Traverse
Vidéo, Toulouse; Taking Back Control, Crypt Gallery, London. Previous
exhibitions include: Art Week Exeter, Devon; ‘Artist Film Festival’ The Bomb
Factory, London; ‘The Roadside Museum’ Basement Arts Project, Leeds; ‘AND
Festival’ Cornerhouse, Manchester; ‘Visions in the Nunnery’, The Nunnery
Gallery, London Education 2005-06 MA Fine Art: Manchester Metropolitan
University 2002-05 BA (Hons) Fine Art: Liverpool John Moores University. |
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Spectre of the Real 