Photography (Photography)

Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor, through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U. S. naval shipbuilding company—in Maine. Stanley “Tom” Durrell, Tinsmith (2008) belongs to a group of portrait-like photographs of the shipyard’s workers lunchboxes. Created over the period of a year, Lockhart’s film and accompanying still photographs are intended as an exploration of the social spaces inside this kind of workplace.

Photography (Photography)

Lockhart’s film Lunch Break investigates the present state of American labor through a close look at the everyday life of the workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard—a private sector of the U. S. naval shipbuilding company—in Maine. Gary Gilpatrick, Insulator (2008) belongs to a group of portrait-like photographs of the shipyard’s workers lunchboxes. Created over the period of a year, Lockhart’s film and accompanying still photographs are intended as an exploration of the social spaces inside this kind of workplace.

Photography (Photography)

Visalia Livestock Market, Visalia, California results from Lockhart’s prolonged investigation of an agricultural center and community. Lockhart traveled around California’s Central Valley, spending time with cattle ranchers on their properties and attending livestock auctions with them and getting a sense of the rhythm of their lives. Throughout this time, the artist shot more than one hundred four-by-five-inch negatives but chose to print just this one from the series.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Bath Time by Sharif Waked is a short video based on the tragi-comic outcome of the Israeli Blockade and the wars in Gaza. The story tells about how, after a war and the ongoing economic pressure, the Gaza Zoo lost several of their animals, and decided that they could paint a donkey so that it could pose as a zebra. The video imagines the donkey in the shower after a shift impersonating a zebra at the Gaza Zoo, as the hot water slowly washes its faux stripes away.

The San Francisco–based artist Shaun O’Dell often uses natural settings as subject matter, lending an artistic complexity to the landscapes he depicts. Stereoscopic images are dual, slightly offset identical pictures that, when seen through a special viewing device, appear three-dimensional. In Temple Creek, a branch of Escalante River, Aquarius Plateau Utah n.d. (Stereoscopic view) (2011) O’Dell has chopped each of the two side-by-side images into 10 vertical strips and mixed them up, to construct a new image.

Painting (Painting)

Shaun O’Dell’s paintings, installations, videos, sculptures, and music explore the overlapping realities of human and natural structures. Whether abstract or figurative, they often read like hieroglyphics, in that they piece together a philosophical portrait of reality. Purple Brush 8 is a painting that details a meeting of geometric forms, and the optical play that results.

Installation (Installation)

Tughra is a protocol by Sharif Waked that reproduces the sixteenth century calligraphic monogram for tughra ; also known as the signature of Suleiman the Magnificent. Under Suleiman’s reign, at the beginning of the 16th century, the Ottoman empire achieved its apex both in terms of territorial extension and cultural creation. Suleiman personally instituted major judicial changes relating to society, education, taxation, and criminal law, as such he is often referred to as ‘The Lawgiver’.

Painting (Painting)

In Play , the image comes from a fashion magazine from the 1950’s (USA) whose theme is costume sportswear from the 19th century. The image was first used in a series involving playing cards which have subsequently gone on to be used in a series of performances. There is cultural contextual displacement and confusion which is presented in the work which embodies the sense of – Play – that was introduced into Shimon’s work.

Painting (Painting)

The painting Index (Tokyo) includes an image of a protest march in Japan. There is some humor in this image and also cultural contextual confusion and displacement, embodied in the painting. The protest we can see on the clipping is against two things : 1)recently the Japanese government revised the constitution (some say illegally) so that the right to collective self-defense is possible; this basically re-militarizes Japan ending decades of pacifism and this sparked the largest public protests in recent years and 2) the protestors are also marching against re-starting nuclear power plants in Japan post-Fukushima.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Executed on Sunday 17 August 2013, “Zonnebloem renamed” is a site-specific performative video film marking the centenary of the 1913 Natives Land Act in South Africa. The short film forms part of the artist’s ongoing collaboration with District Six residents titled WITNESS. Commencing in 2011, WITNESS negotiates the forced removals and land compensation in District Six and across South Africa.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

For Immersion , Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations. One of their projects consists in using virtual reality (environments created to simulate this world) for therapeutic reasons for soldiers suffering traumas after the Iraq war. The double projection creates a parallel between animations and testimonies by soldiers reliving their mission, the explosions, gunshots and ambushes, their fears and their guilt.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Shaun Leonardo uses his own body to communicate and portray imagery. In his film Bull in the Ring , hyper-masculine images of physicality are staged at the expense of his own physical comfort. The function of the male body has long been a signifier of self-worth and the body affirms and legitimizes feelings of control and agency over environment.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

The artist describes the work as “very performative video-pieces but they take on a more sculptural feel. The action is simple: I kick a video camera through a site that is embedded with sociological elements, which I try to question through my practice. I chose Red Square as the site to work in Moscow.

Retired Pillar represents the death and deterioration of legacy of colonial Shanghai. The silicon Corinthian column lays horizontal upon its pedestal, inflating and deflating in the rhythm of difficult breathing, as if exhausted by its lifelong labor. Shan comments on the deterioration of the influence of French colonialism within Shanghai as well as the adoption of Western forms of architectural decoration as symbols of wealth and power.