The Works (2010, 15MB, 4:27 min)

Interview/Documentary (2010, 23MB, 6:38 min)

We showed some earlier footage of the work featured here last May
and waxed lyrical about it.

Now Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger have a show at Gallery A.O.P
in Johannesburg, South Africa, opening tomorrow, and we’re delighted
to feature two videos, one of the works themselves and one of a documentary
about their making and the impulse behind them, including interviews with
Nathaniel and Jessica.
These videos are also on a DVD* which comes with the show catalogue.

Usually I fight shy of reproducing artists’ own publicity but I’m going to
break from the rule here because what they themselves say sums the pieces
up rather nicely.

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger and Nathaniel Stern approach both old and
new media as form.
In their “Distill Life” works, the artists permanently mount translucent
prints and drawings directly on top of video screens, creating moving
images on paper. They incorporate technologies and aesthetics from
traditional printmaking – including woodblock, silk screen, etching,
lithography, photogravure etc – with the technologies and aesthetics
of contemporary digital, video and networked art, to explore images
as multidimensional.
Meuninck-Ganger and Stern hack and tweak, shoot and print,
appropriate and remix, edit and draw. Their juxtaposition of anachronistic
and disparate methods, materials and content -print and video, paper
and electronics, real and virtual – enables novel approaches to
understanding each. The artists engage with subject matter ranging
from historical portraiture to current events, from hyperreal landscapes
to socially awkward moments.
The works are surprising, wistful, enchanting, and seriously playful.

“The works are surprising, wistful, enchanting, and seriously playful.”
– absolutely!

I don’t know whether we have any readers in Johannesburg – if yes I strongly
urge you to go along to what promises to be a real treat.

* and in the interests of transparency I should say that I wrote the accompanying
music for the video documentation…