self timer
self timer - Video installation. Exhibited as part of PHOTO 2022 at Blindside's group exhibition 'The Portrait,' curated by Karl Halliday and Josephine Meade, June 2022.
https://blindside.org.au/program/the-portrait
Exhibition essay by Karl Halliday: blindside.org.au/publication/the-portrait-a-curatorial-essay-by-karl-halliday
self timer - Video and assemblages of personal items, exhibited at CASPA gallery in Castlemaine (solo exhibition), November 2022.
In this video work I capture a series of 10 self portraits, dressed in different clothes while posing in different scenes. The self portrait is recorded on two seperate devices; an analogue 35mm film camera and a digital video camera. The video camera is positioned behind the film camera so it records both the scene and the film camera in front of it. The beginning of each scene shows my hands setting the film camera to a 10 second self timer which involves cocking the shutter, winding down the lever and pressing the shutter. As the shutter is pressed, the self timer begins. I walk into the scene and the frame is captured at the end of 10 seconds with flash.
The clothes I wear belonged to my late mother Judy. She died a few months before I started making this work. The scenes are captured in her home where she spent the final years, weeks and days in her body. Judy was an avid op-shopper, sewer and assembler of quirky things. She expressed herself through clothes, cooking and decorating the home; there was no particular style, trend or recipe she followed. My understanding of her expression was to be driven by emotion - a spontaneous response to the present moment.
Amidst all the things she left behind, I found a letter she had written to her Mum (my Nonna) not long after she had passed away. It read:
Dear Mum, thought about you again today. Hope it's fun being in Heaven. I miss you and just wanted to say that since you have gone I have had terrible trouble trying to find something to wear.
List of imagery
1. Lucy Foster 'self timer,' HD Video: 7:00min loop, 2022.
2 -4. Photo documentation of 'self timer,' video playing on TV, custom metal pole, exhibited at Blindside in 'The Portrait' (PHOTO 2022).
5 - 14. Photo documentation of 'self timer,' TV and sculpture installation, exhibited at CASPA gallery in Castlemaine (2022).
© Lucy Foster. Living and working between Naarm (Melbourne) and Dja Dja Wurrung Country (Castlemaine) on unceded land belonging to the Wurundjeri and Jaara Jaara people of the Kulin Nation.