Tether
Collaborative practice between a group of artists who all graduated together from Nottingham Trent University’s Fine Art course in 2007
Exploring joint interests in a variety of subjects, taking inspiration from the absurd, the cinematic and the tragic. Tether’s playful practice spans video, installation and performance, often involving narrative elements and encouraging the audience to take an investigative approach to our work.
TOO BIG TO FAIL
A new video work that draws comparisons between the recent financial crisis and Hollywood thrillers. During the recession we have been offered scapegoat figureheads to focus our anger on; debauched bankers who have become personifications of (and are being held responsible for) corruption and immorality in business; their personal flaws becoming headline news. In Hollywood thrillers, it is quite often a ‘breaking point’ crossed that leads to the 'potential for evil' in a character becoming realised- with the previously anonymous Lex Luthors (or Germans in Die Hard movies) becoming their wicked and depraved selves. What were the breaking points for the banks and institutions that were once deemed (perhaps with the self-fulfilling misnomer) ‘too big to fail’? Constructing a self-reflexive narrative that dramatises the demise and public ‘bail out’ of a large financial institution, the piece will itself be subject to a deterioration of production values as the story progresses; simultaneously staging its own failed production as a big Hollywood thriller; with the budget overspent in the opening scene and the star abandoning the project half way through (replaced by a poor alternative), leaving the egotistical director to piece together some kind of sense from disaster.
UKYA PROJECTS:
National Biennale: Derby 2010