Chris Stockbridge: Relative Space, Son/Husband

Relative Space looks at a family relationship shown in an expanded moment of time. It is made up of a series of still images extended with film editing software and looped. The still camera becomes a witness to time passing rather than the index of an event.

The time which emanates in the work relates to the ‘crystal image’ described by Deleuze where the image somehow fuses the past of its subject with the present of its viewing. Yve Lomax has it as time escaping chronology which is uniquely rich with unlimited potential.

‘When the present is thrown into question an interval opens up in time …it is when the present of a moment splits and gapes open; when the present itself becomes an interval.’ (‘Sounding the event’ P94)

Time is stretched and distorted in the repetition and resequencing of single frames. Elements of recognisable gestures trigger memory and take on disquieting echoes of the claustrophobia and frustration of family life. The viewer is held by the shifting gazes of the subjects replacing the viewpoint of the artist. It is a performance witnessed by her, played out under her gaze as wife and mother.

A space between stillness and movement, between the photographic and cinematic, is created outside of time’s normally perceived linearity, where expectations of the narrative of family relationship are subverted. It is a time where thought slows and the mind might wander allowing the unconscious to surface and the possibility of new understanding of the familiar and familial to emerge.