Arts Award - Part B

Exhbition review - 'Chronicles' by Haris Epaminonda

An arts events review. I don't think I've ever reviewed something before, so this could either be wonderfully brilliant or disastrously terrible. Here goes...

We went to a lot of exhibitions as part of my apprenticeship. I chose to review 'Chronicles' by Haris Epaminonda, which is showing at the Site Gallery in Sheffield from the 11th June until the 21st August 2010. The exhibit features five looped films projected in small squares onto the walls of the gallery, accompanied by a range of often eerie sounds. At first glance I found it a bit dull. It was only after I gave it a closer inspection and a guided tour of the works that I began to see more of what it was about.

I noticed of the imagery seemed to convey the life of a particular culture. For example, one of the projections showed a series of videos of ruins mixed in with photos of statues of people, which I believe were of Greek origin. Similar to this, another showed a long slideshow of pots along with some videos of men working in fields, both of which reminded me of oriental culture. Other than these two fairly obvious ones, the rest would have being impossible to figure out without the tour.

One of the videos is very particular to the history of the artist who was born in Cyprus, a country whose ownership has long being disputed between the Greeks and the Turks. The video depicts a palm-tree and a sign post, which I imagine is the borderline between the two sections. I liked this because although there wasn't much movement, when put into context and the background sounds taken into account, it had a real atmosphere to it.

In a separate room to the others, all alone in a corner, a projection showed a silent film of animals performing in a circus ring, something which is now outlawed in most developed countries. The silence added a tenseness and focus to what, if shown to us in a different way (i.e. without sound) can suddenly be seen differently.

Up to now, all the imaginary for me suggested links to the past, whether it be a past borderline in a country or an entertainment act which no longer happens. But the next clip for me goes and scraps any connections I made so far, but is still the most unusual and interesting for me. A car dragging an olive tree in circles round a field, while a small pack of dogs watch over the scene. This happens continuously, with a fair amount of time passing before the clip begins the loop again, and yet no motive for these actions is ever revealed. Stuff like this intrigues me, and I would never have being able to walk away from that scene like the artist apparently did without any explanation of why! How she did it I'll never know.

The background noise was a mix of smooth calming noises such as the wind and running water and loud booming noises like the striking of a gong. All of which II thought added to the strange timeless quality of the work.

The films where also all shot with something called 'Super 8', which I don't have a clue about, (except that it’s real film rather than digital video) but it made the footage look quite old, and a little mysterious which I liked :)

On the whole it was a fairly good and interesting exhibition, but I would have like to see just a bit more of how it linked together and even better, to have met and interviewed the artist. Maybe two or three extra projections would have made it complete:D