Editorial

The steady march of film, video and other screen-based work into the gallery continues. Not long ago they were outsiders, experimental, eclipsed in one world by the big screen and in another, by more tangible art mediums. Nowadays, flickering pictures play a part in many exhibitions, either standing alone or more frequently, as part of a multi-media display. In this issue, Illana Halperin at Edinburgh’s doggerfisher, draws immaculately, but also films her sources. Rosalind Nashashibi, a young artist selected for the British Art Show 6 at Baltic in September, has recently spent eight months in New York filming. She too draws, but is increasingly associated with a delicate translation of ordinary life on screen. At a time when moving picture technology is so available that everyone can be a director or viewer on a mobile phone, artists like these seem more inspired than ever to explore its potential. At the Venice Biennale, little movies are everywhere, many of them showing remarkably straightforward responses to life, not quite documentary, but exuberant, insightful snippets by gazing, grazing eyes cast over a crowd, a culture, a cup of tea. Some are intimate, some scary. Some demand time, others a moment. Some are immediate, others contrived. Just when we thought TV had us jaded, artists offer new ways of seeing. To prove it, Threshhold, a new gallery devoted to video and film, opens in Perth in September.

Still photography too continues to make a mark. David Michael Clarke and Shauna McMullan have used it on journeys to document and then patch a work together. Eva Merz and Daziel + Scullion use it on a larger scale, the former collaging, the latter producing advertising billboards. As examined in MAP Issue 3, both have courageous political messages to send within their images, precious and valued commodities in a world of useless ones.