(selected by Donna Lynas)
Untitled (Morning Light), 2007
Katherine Hymers' work inhabits a fragile world. A peaceful, gentle, taut, hard, sublime, fragile world. Hymers makes the most exquisite performances to camera - appearing alone, at times naked, vulnerable but untouchable and utterly distant.
In 'Untitled (Morning Light)' (2007), shown in a gallery setting on a flat-screen monitor, a young woman lies in bed in a room flooded with sunlight, sleeping and alone. Time passes slowly. The work has been shot with a low quality camera and the surface of the screen shimmers with pixelations- the effect further slows this one viewpoint shot.
Shot off centre, the woman seems contentedly alone in a world of stone flooring and fresh white cotton sheets. Monkish. Pure. Pure that is until a moment of defilement when at last she sits up to reveal herself - her back to camera - and a dog jumps unexpectedly onto the bed. A spell is broken, peace shattered. The dog is the only one of the two to look into the camera and hold our gaze, 'she is mine' he is saying. In dream symbolism the dog is a protector. She was sleeping, therefore is the dog in her dream? And is he protecting her from us? Because we have been caught looking at a woman, naked and alone in bed, waiting for her to do something and not quite knowing what that something will be.
This work represents Hymers' oeuvre succinctly. It is difficult to find the edges in what she does, to be sure of our role. Are we with her or against her? Do we understand? Are we allowed to sympathise, empathise, help? Does she need us at all? I think the answer is - no she doesn't. She may inhabit a solitary world but that world is hers alone and she is both happy and caught within it.
Hymers has a magnetic presence on screen. She is unrelentingly still and doesn't care that we might have to stand and look for 15 or 20 minutes before she gives anything to us. And even then we only get a small clue, a fragment. The rest is up to us.
Hymers also makes live performances and was most recently included in Glasgow's National Review of Live Art. Here she performed one-to-one in a darkened room, naked, raised on a plinth and following the eyes of the person trapped in the room with her. I didn't see the performance but having seen her work to camera can imagine the intensity and exhilaration of that experience.
Donna Lynas, July 2008
Biography
Since graduating from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2004, Hymers has continued to develop work across video and performance. In association with Artsadmin, Hymers received mentoring from the artist Franko B in 2005-6, and now has a studio at Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridgeshire. She recently presented a new site specific performance, 'Closer', as part of ANTI Festival in Kuopio, Finland.
