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Review Aug 06 2008 « | »
Anticipation III - Giles Ripley Giles Ripley Video Test

Donald Eastwood


It has been long since noted by the writer Julian Gough, in this essay, that the modern novel has become worthy, boring, anxious, dull. Comedy was, from its classical origins, the perspective of the gods, while Tragedy was the perspective of humble man, he continues. But history, through lost sources, kings and religion, has raised Tragedy above its alternative, while Comedy, preferred in new artistic mediums in the twentieth century - cinema, the comic book, trash fiction - has been further exiled to the realms of light entertainment.

A slant is evident in video art too. How many pieces have drawn you into anxiety or boredom, which seem to have principal focus on the beat and pulse of film (through repetition), or the short attention span of the Internet generation (with films demanding hyper-extended patience) or the viewer's tendency to be instructed by rather than engage in the moving picture (by starving the viewer of information)? This doesn't mean to say any of these subjects, or their difficulty to watch, are not very interesting, but at times it makes you wonder whether the potential of watchable and humorous video art is being equally well exposed.

This is perhaps why Giles Ripley's brilliant short films have caused such a stir. After Anticipation they are going to New Contemporaries 2008 at the Liverpool biennial in September and the Best in Show at the John Jones Project Space. He is featured in August/September's Artworld as one of 20 best students from this year's shows.

His largely one-man pieces are built from mime, puppetry and image transparency editing (allowing him to appear more than once in the same shot). Their exaggerated and fictionalised narratives of his everyday life, and the filmmaking and performance that involves, nod post-modern self-reference and genetic theory. A consistent playing down of his life and ability belies the standard of what he is doing, not least his excellent monologues, mime and compositons. As his mother puts it in Bill, his 'monotonous self-depreciation, rather than encouraging an audience's empathy, offers no more than an unconvincing pastiche of more successful past attempts by people with far more talent than [him].'

'The fault is in the culture. But it is also internalised in the writers, who self-limit and self-censor,' says Gough of his novelists, while with Ripley it is this very self-limitation and self-censorship driving the narrative. Watch all his pieces, beginning with My Hobbies (above) and working up, on his website, here.

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