Graduated from Sheffield Hallam University
Selected by Sarah Brown
Installation shot, 2009
Happenstance is the title of the 2009 MA Contemporary Fine Art exhibition held at Sylvester Space, Sheffield. The nature of chance frames the students’ work in a convincingly well-curated and organised show. Both Sara Brannan and Anthony Hatton's work stood out as conceptually rigorous and well conceived.
Sara Brannan's installation 'Drawing Studies' (2009) encapsulates and explores a tension between carefully rehearsed performance and the moment it is filmed and repeated. The history and legacy of making work based on historical art practices and movements provides the starting point for her work.
Monitors placed on plinths play four different films featuring the artist engaged in various activities. Brannan's subject is the act and process of making, in a post minimalist practice and how this can be transferred to performance and video. Using video as a recording device she has been looking at the performativity of objects in relation to the body.
The first monitor shows the artist playing the notes D E A D on the piano with her nose. The second monitor showed a piece of paper being screwed up and flicked off screen then returning to be unfolded, smoothed out, then screwed up and flicked away again. The third screen presented the artist's hand clicking a pen to the beat of her heart. The fourth and last monitor shows the artist drawing a line. All four monitors are on a continuous loop and each act is repeated.
The work is a well-articulated research-based piece that seeks to investigate authorship and locate the artist in the history of art but also explores the tension between the role of self and the artist.
(Sarah Brown, 2009)
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