Deceptive landscapes: fragments of unreliable memory (2011), was a performance lecture imagined, composed and performed by Simon Murray and Wendy Kirkup. Provoked by reflections on the multiple meanings enshrined in the word landscape, this performance played with landscape as inscape, as family history, as longing, as unreliable memory and as always ‘bubbling up around us’ (MikeContinue reading “Deceptive Landscapes”
Author Archives: wendykirkup
Untitled
Matte Box test (in progress). 16mm film, 3 minutes, silent. Made using a Bolex camera and matte box, 2022.Elaborated from the composition of one of Swiss healer, researcher, and artist Emma Kunz’s visionary drawings, the stills below reveal otherwise largely concealed images within the film as it plays in reel time.
Untitled
16mm film, B&W, 3 mins, silent. Footage developed by James Holcombe using a mordençage process, 2021. Research towards the making of rough cut botanical (2022)
Map
Map (2010) is a short film made using 3D computer visualisation. It is a meditation on architecture, film and cinematic spectacle. Map draws on the history of the Hollywood Picture Palace , the architects of which drew extensively on representations , both real and imagined, of palaces and landscapes. The film proposes a relationship betweenContinue reading “Map”
Gestures of Listening
Gestures of Listening 16mm colour film, stills, 2021 Selected frames from footage shot at Glasgow Theatre and Arts Collective, Govan, Glasgow, 31 October 2021 during an Improvisational vocal workshop led by Nichola Scrutton, organised in support of research towards the making of rough cut botanical (2022). Supported by Creative Scotland Open Fund Award Reflection byContinue reading “Gestures of Listening”
film from a score
film from a score (2017) is the second in a trilogy of film portraits. Each filmed performance uses both the notational and indeterminate elements of the score as a vehicle through which to explore aspects of film structure and form. The filmic rhythms of film from a score are determined by the synchronicities and slippagesContinue reading “film from a score”
Touches Bloquées
Touches Bloquées (2016) is the first in a trilogy of film portraits. Each filmed performance uses both the notational and indeterminate elements of the score as a vehicle through which to explore aspects of film structure and form. Silviya Mihaylova performs György Ligeti’s score Touches Bloquées, foregrounding the making of music as a loop betweenContinue reading “Touches Bloquées”
The Forest of Everything
The Forest of Everything (2019) in collaboration with with Richy Carey. The Forest of Everything is about collaborating, a playing with and knowing with. Influenced by Margaret Tait’s Aerial (1974), Wendy, Richy and the children played, played, and played again with the materials around them; light, water, air, earth and trees. Knowing and knowing anew how we meet and compose theseContinue reading “The Forest of Everything”
Two Études
Two Études (2019) is the third in a trilogy of film portraits. Each filmed performance uses both the notational and indeterminate elements of the score as a vehicle through which to explore aspects of film structure and form. Two Études is a film in two corresponding halves. In the first, Mieko Kanno performs Étude no.Continue reading “Two Études”
rough cut botanical
rough cut botanical (2022) interweaves multiple images of plant and animal life, while a voice speaks to the materiality of its subject matter and to film itself. Inspired by audio description, it playfully explores how they may speak their space together. Shot on 16mm, the film uses a matte box, an old cinematic technique toContinue reading “rough cut botanical”
Webcam
Webcam (2016) Pencil on paper 20 x 15 cm each. Exhibitions: 2016Derwent Art Prize, (Touring) Mall Galleries, London, Trowbridge Arts Centre, Wiltshire. Selectors: Meryl Ainslie, Eileen Cooper RA and Michael Glover. 2016Touches Bloquées, 1Royal Terrace, Glasgow.
Wave length
Wave Length (2014) Pencil on paper, 32 x 45 cm eachTaken from the end still from Michael Snow’s 45 minute long film Wavelength (1967)
Reverberation
Reverberation (2012) Pencil on paper 21.0 x 29.7cm each.Two drawings made from a still image taken from Ernie Gehr’s film Reverberation (1969) ‘Reverberation’ by Ernie Gehr (1969). ‘Filmed at and around the World Trade Center’s construction site, Gehr’s mysterious film follows a nameless young couple (Canadian actress Margaret Lamarre and experimental filmmaker Andrew Noren) asContinue reading “Reverberation”
Essays:
Catalogue Essay by Helen Cadwallader for Ctrl Space: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, ZKM|Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, 2002. Gallery Essay by Richard Grayson for Experimental Art Foundation and Adelaide Festival 1996, Search (Adelaide) and Cross-Winds.
Untitled
Untitled (2020), collaborative film and written score, with Alex Hetherington, 16mm film, colour, 2 mins 53 seconds.
Cross-Winds
As a city seeks to direct and contain movement on many specific levels, of flow, of movement, of behaviour, so it itself is shaped and contained by forces that we cannot readily see: of politics, of ideology, of aspiration. Therefore a city remains as much a product of the unseen, a visible projection in timeContinue reading “Cross-Winds”
Search (Newcastle), Search (Adelaide)
On Monday May 17th, 1993 at 1pm in Newcastle upon Tyne city centre a synchronised walk took place in two separate locations by Pat Naldi and Wendy Kirkup. This event was recorded on the 16 camera surveillance system recently installed throughout the commercial centre of the city by Northumbria Police (Newcastle upon Tyne was theContinue reading “Search (Newcastle), Search (Adelaide)”
B.c.c
B.c.c. (1997), Cleveland Gallery and The Tannery Gallery, London. 3 times counting, repeat track 1 0100:00 to 0102 and forty something’ ’3 times vocal, repeat track 1 0100:0102 and fiftysomething, was a sound work made for B.c.c,, an exhibition held simultaneously between The Tannery Gallery and Cleveland Gallery London. Three separate CD players installed on eachContinue reading “B.c.c”
Echo
Echo (2000) was a multi-media video artwork projected simultaneously by satellite downlink at The International Centre for Life, Newcastle upon Tyne and The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow. From Locus+ publicity to accompany the screening: Echo is a large scale multi-media artwork in which artist Wendy Kirkup has created a technological ‘body atlas’ ofContinue reading “Echo”
‘Chute
‘Chute (2004), was a live performance and video installation commissioned by Allenheads Contemporary Arts as part of their ScartLab residencies 2003-4. In the skies above Allenheads Contemporary Arts a skydiver, connected to the gallery via live video link, became the vehicle for a cinematic ‘travelling shot’ which traversed the space between the abstracted aerial viewContinue reading “‘Chute”
Small Gestures (flowers, lockdown)
Medium format and 35mm stills, Black and White, 2021.
Federal Plaza
Federal Plaza (2014), Pencil on Paper , each x 21.0 x 29.7 cm. All source images downloaded from the internet.
Bouquet (New Hybrids, Colour)
Bouquet (New Hybrids, Colour), Colour 16mm film, 3 minutes, silent, 2020.In collaboration with Alex Hetherington as part of his larger project Talking, Counting, Blinking, Noting: 16mm film as a collaborative action, 2019-2020. A project made together/apart during lockdown 2020. The 16mm film was passed through the camera first in Glasgow and then a second time inContinue reading “Bouquet (New Hybrids, Colour)”
Small Gestures (slipped frames)
Slipped Frames (2021), B&W, 35mm
S.I.S
S.I.S. (1992-3) was an early online, real-time interactive work developed through a bulletin board system via CompuServe CB Simulator. S.I.S was the adopted name of both myself and Pat Naldi as we interacted with others within the online world of fictional identities the system enabled. Developed during a residency at the Banff Centre, Canada 1992-3Continue reading “S.I.S”
0836-785555
0836-785555 (1991) was a site-specific video installation in Newcastle upon Tyne. The interior of a disused Victorian house in Newcastle upon Tyne was made visible to visitors via twelve CCTV cameras situated throughout its rooms, relaying images back to monitors installed in the former reception room of the house. Simultaneously, a looped recording of personalContinue reading “0836-785555”
Bouquet (New Hybrids, Black and White)
Bouquet (New Hybrids, Black and White), B&W 16mm film, 3 minutes, silent, 2020.In collaboration with Alex Hetherington as part of his larger project Talking, Counting, Blinking, Noting: 16mm film as a collaborative action, 2019-2020. A project made together/apart during lockdown 2020. The 16mm film was passed through the camera first in Glasgow and then a secondContinue reading “Bouquet (New Hybrids, Black and White)”
Soundscapes
Soundscapes (1996) was a live performance hosted in the Wards Building Basement, Waygood Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne and ISIS Gallery, Melmerby, Cumbria. The two spaces were linked via ISDN which enabled live sound and video to appear simultaneously in both spaces where two female sopranos performed fragments of unaccompanied operatic duets together, within and acrossContinue reading “Soundscapes”
@shift
@shift (1993) was an intervention into the city of Bilbao as the city undertook a programme of regeneration. Railway tickets for the RENFE & Eusko Trenbideak rail companies operating the routes along both sides of the Nervion River and the heavy industries it had supported, were redesigned with images suggesting a future in the flowContinue reading “@shift”
L’Inconnue de la Seine
L’Inconnue de la Seine (1991) was a 24-hour slide projection on to the side of a small mortuary situated on the banks of the river in Newcastle upon Tyne. The work drew upon the story of L’Inconnue de la Seine, a death mask reputedly cast from the face of an unknown woman who drowned inContinue reading “L’Inconnue de la Seine”
Wendy Kirkup 