Three
channel installation. 9:30 loop.
Glen Dimplex Artists’ Award 2000.
Esther is a three channel video installation in which several separate
16mm medical films are combined together digitally. The work explores
a fragment to find its own melancholy narrative, in this case an elderly
woman attempting to rise from a hospital bed. Surgery footage displayed
on a monitor delivers a subtext of personal invasion to the institutional
framework of the larger projections.
“Esther, a touching and intelligent use of found film from
what looks like the 1960s, explores the human figure as object where
Esther's middle-aged body is probed and measured by surrounding experts
while videoed surgical procedures unspool nearby.”
Medb Ruane. Sunday Times. 30th April 2000