Darren Almond’s film and video works create a tension between stillness and movement. The experience of place takes on a strong resonance in Almond’s minimalist but emotionally charged settings, which explore space, time and human subjectivity.
As an elemental ‘landscape simply made up of air, liquid and gas in different states’, Antarctica is a location that has long fascinated Almond. In early 2002, the artist was invited by Mission Antarctica to crew for a month around the Antarctic Peninsula. A is his response to that journey, in which Antarctica represents ‘the axis of time and space, the axis of everything’.
Almond’s haunting film envelopes the viewer in an abstract world, devoid of human presence. Skimming the crystalline surfaces of the ice islands, A slowly reveals delicate variations in the landscape as ice meets water and sky. The near-silence of Antarctica is matched with a dreamy score and the sampling of real sounds-cracks and rips in the ice-that Almond recorded on his journey. The visual and aural experience of A is as much an interior, psychological journey as an exterior one to the ‘end’ of the earth.
(SW 30.03.05)
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How to watch
Collection
In ACMI's collection
Previously on display
17 July 2005
ACMI Screen Gallery
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
B2000120
Subject categories
Sound/audio
Audio Format/Stereo
Colour
Colour
Holdings
DVD [PAL]; Exhibition Copy
Mini DV; Sub-master