'Log' DV projection and book, duration 6 hours 28 x 42 x 4 cm. Installation view (still) 'Bounty' Apt Gallery, London 2007
'Log' is a digital video projection taken from a selection of the writings of Captain Bligh's logbook, presenting an historical context, bringing past and present together through the filming of myself re-writing and thus experiencing Bligh's activities and thoughts.
Captain Bligh's logbook from the HMS Bounty is housed at the Kew Archives, and the selection chosen for re-writing is taken from the specific period of arriving at Otaheite to the leaving, and centres around accounts of the propogation of the breadfruit for transportation. Within these documents are accounts of the daily lives of the Otaheitian chiefs, their wives, rituals, sexual diseases and variations on their origins. It encompasses a selection of 57 pages of writing and spans from October 1788 to April 1789. It is shot in real time, written with pen and ink, but transferred through new technology, documenting a very specific place and space 300 years ago. The ghost like presentation of the work, through its liminality, illusion and transience of time belies the physical presence of a 'me' re-experiencing Bligh in 2007, as he writes in 1788.
Installation views from the 'Bounty' installation, APT Gallery below (Click images to expand)
www.aptstudios.org/gallery/past_08.htm
Installation view from 'Dialogue', Art First, London 2008(Click image to expand)
www.artfirst.co.uk/other/pe_dialogue08.html
