George Saxon

Precinct - A Passage of Disappearances

The 1960’s shopping centre development in Auchinleck Square provides the context for a series of
audio-video recordings of everyday users and passers-by. A ghost square whose heyday has long gone
and whose shops and nightclubs are now all but closed

The videotaped observations are re-constructed as a series of multi-layered and overlapping scenes of
this shopping precinct. Existing spaces are reorganised, revealing hidden and complex fragmented
moments of time and affirmations of place and location, as appearance only.

The installation of the work utilising five plasma screens, reveals a potential panoramic view filmed from
several linked camera points, which mirror the main through fare used by the passers-by. In turn, they
become protagonists in a time-based game; where appearance and disappearance are revealed as
fleeting and unexpected moments.

 

George Saxon is a video artist working internationally and nationally. His artistic practice has ranged from early experimental performance interactions with film and video in the late 1970's, through to the multi-screen projections working with both existing and prefabricated architecture as one of the founder members of HOUSEWATCH (1985-1997). An early pioneer of digital and video art, George's work has been shown in places as far apart as Iceland and Japan . His work has involved creating a gigantic paper house for his projections, ‘in-car' video performances and, as part of ‘house watch', taking over a city street and making the houses themselves into video installations.

He has continued to develop a range of digital video projections as site-specific installations. His work seeks to embrace and reflect ways in which we understand our private and social environments though our interaction with the urban (and rural) spaces we inhabit and our encounters with technology. His work is essentially a series of explorations of time-based environments displayed as ‘cinematic interventions' and re-presentations of the “familiar”, which provoke, surprise and challenge expectations.

 

Both his solo and collaborative work evolves from responses to place, site or situation at a given moment in time. In this sense the work is speculative and playful as he considers and reconsiders the flow of experiences and encounters with places, situations and encounters with others. His processes of working are explorations of the cultural and the personal in response to urban (and rural) location and architecture. Often drawing from memory, the work attempts to address dual concerns of place and identity.

 

George Saxon's work is essentially a series of explorations of time-based environments displayed as ‘cinematic interventions' and re-presentations of the “familiar”, which provoke, surprise and challenge expectations. The processes of working elicit responses where outcomes are unpredictable.