Rachel Lancaster's recent works are derived from her interest in the intersections between Music, Film, and Photography, their respective transitions from analogue to digital, and the potential for imagery to communicate beyond the immediate through the way they are constructed and received.
Voicings is an HD video and audio work depicting a spot-lit section of floor in an otherwise dark and undefined space which is accompanied by a responsive soundtrack by musician Lucy Johnson. To create the work Lancaster has made and filmed a tabletop tableaux constructed from cardboard and a hand held torch making a moving image that contains only the most subtle and almost imperceptible atmospheric changes. Johnson’s minimal soundtrack flirts with the image and the viewer, simultaneously activating and frustrating the space with the constant potential for something other to interrupt the space.
Formation is a series of works in which Lancaster uses an HD video projector to present a single still digital image. As with Voicings, each Formation work is created in the artist’s studio. In this case, Lancaster uses a Cloud Tank, a technique developed in the 1970’s involving tanks of fresh water, salt, and milk, to create a wide variety of atmospheric effects for Cinema including classics such at Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Poltergeist. The projected still image presents us with a pictorial scenario we are so familiar with that we are deceived into believing that the clouds are perpetually moving before our eyes.
