Kelly Richardson
Wagons Roll (The Remake)

Canada, 2003/07, digital video, 15 min loop

‘My work is linked primarily by the idea that all sensations can be summed up in key, slight moments. I try to make work about these loaded moments, which are found in the everyday, of everything at once or that are somehow simultaneously absurd, hilarious, beautiful, sad, pathetic, lonely, futile, exciting.’

Kelly Richardson
Kelly Richardson was born in Canada where she studied fine art at the Ontario College of Art and Design and media studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her works have been exhibited internationally at various venues including: Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal, Canada (2007); The Nunnery, London, UK (2006); Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, UK (2005); Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2004); Stills Gallery, Scotland (2004); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2002–03); and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2002). Her work was recently acquired by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and will be featured in its upcoming exhibition, The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image (February–May, 2008). Additional forthcoming exhibitions include solo shows at the KW|AG, Kitchener, Canada (January–April, 2008) and Hallwalls, Buffalo, New York (January–February, 2008). Kelly Richardson lives and works in the UK. www.kellyrichardson.net

A car hangs portentously in mid-air, subverting a clichéd mini-climax in an action movie. The viewer can only guess as to what events led to its peculiar suspension, likewise they have no idea if it will ever plummet to the earth below, but in this ‘in-between’ state lies an uneasy calm.

In Wagons Roll, freeze-frame and digital montage are used to construct a humorous and paradoxical scene from cinema. Although the image is filled with potential death and drama, it is absurdly amusing. The image is immediately recognisable as a construction from a Hollywood-style film.

Pausing long enough to observe the video, it becomes apparent that although the car is frozen in time, the clouds that hover in the sky are slowly moving across the frame from right to left. At this moment, a soft but perceptible soundtrack of nature sounds (birds and crickets) can be heard. Occasionally a bird flies by in the sky, while the automobile remains inert. Thrilling and lifeless, the car induces a smile. This is an insightful intervention into the power and economy of cinema. It condenses this familiar and clichéd cinematic trope to a whimsical, almost calming moment in time. Caught in the moment of the image, the underlying reiteration of popular culture and image consumption is converted to the duration of thought, daydreams and the pleasures of embodied time.