Sarah Cockings & Harriet Fleriot

SEE HER – Sarah Cockings & Harriet Fleuriot

Sarah and Harriet were in residence at Back Lane West from 11th – 16th March 2019. Spending their time in the surrounding nature, exploring performative notions of prediction, confessional self-reflection, and shared determination. As artists they are interested in the metaphysical properties of the “wilderness” and engaging with this through psychical gestures, bodily actions, and vocal expressions, framed by the landscape, camera and sound recordings.

SEE HER compares how ‘teen’ girls and ‘thirty-something’ women ritually engage with their sense of self development, and how this relates to the portrayal of women in horror films. Sarah and Harriet conducted research through interviews, workshops and film analysis, as well as studying their own personal histories and current experiences. They focus on banal yet significantly charged reactions to emotional and bodily transitions, and how these identity shifts might feel particularly heightened for a woman during teenagehood and in her thirties. SEE HER considers both the individual and collective response to personal growth, closely examining the coping mechanisms that provide clarity and certainty during times of confusion, anxiety and precarity. The work will play with sensationalist horror film tropes as a cultural reference point, deconstructing and defusing generic characterisations of female behaviour. It will explore the temporary belief systems, sensory perceptions, and social technologies used daily by teenagers and thirty-somethings as they reconfigure their own sense of being in the world.

Sarah and Harriet shared some of their activity from their week of research at and around Back Lane West, as well as presenting and discussing their previous works on Friday 15th March 2019.

The artists were working towards their next project as part of their first UK solo/duo show Another Funny Turn, presented at Block 336 (London, UK) in May/June 2019.

Biography

Sarah Cockings and Harriet Fleuriot are artists working collaboratively across performance, moving image, sound and sculpture.

Their first project together, a short film called PLASMA VISTA (2016), stemmed from inquiries into the performativity of self-discovery, economies of creative collaboration and mythologies around the feminine. It was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries in 2017, won Tenderflix in 2016, and has screened internationally including WRO Bienale, Aesthetica, Underwire, BFI Flare, Eindhoven Film Festival (Best Experimental, Best Art Direction), ECU (Best European Experimental Film), London Short Film Festival (nominated Best Cinematography) and TBCTV at Somerset House. Following this, they created LENDABLE MENDABLE VENDABLE (2018), an interactive installation where they performed game-like systems to investigate the agency of material objects and anxious, desire-driven labour. LMV took place at Art Night (London, UK) and Eindhoven Film Festival (Eindhoven, Netherlands) in 2018 and will culminate in a short film produced towards the end of 2019.

plasmavista.com
lendablemendablevendable.com