26-01-2012
This spring, visitors to YSP have the opportunity to experience Still, a beautiful installation by Jem Finer, founding member of pop group The Pogues, which opens to the public in the calm and atmospheric YSP Chapel on Saturday 11 February 2012.
Still is a large-scale projection of 700 images, edited from 18,000, taken in a forest by a solar-powered camera and constantly reordered through computer software. Commissioned by Stour Valley Arts (SVA) in 2011, Still captures a year in the Kent woodland showing the ever-changing sequence between dusk and dawn; an ebb and flow of time through which the viewer is as likely to witness the passing of a single day as the turning of a year’s seasons.
In Still, Finer extends a new art form, lying somewhere between photography and film – a still image in a state of constant flux. What seems static is actually an endless series of transitions, both subtle and dramatic. No two viewings of the work are ever the same as the film continually finds new and different paths through the days, weeks and months. The project reflects Finer’s interest in designing intricate programs and complex structures that encourage perception of the macro, the cosmological and the infinite. In Still, we are simultaneously drawn to consider our relationship to the natural world and its processes.
Since leaving The Pogues in 1996, Finer has established a highly respected multimedia art practice, which draws on his early training as a computer scientist. Finer is known for the Artangel commission Longplayer, a self-selecting musical composition that began at midnight on 31 December 1999 and will continue for one thousand years until the next millennium.
Four seasonal limited edition prints of Still will be available to buy from the YSP Shop and online at ysp.co.uk. Jem Finer will be in conversation with Ben Tufnell, Curator at Haunch of Venison gallery, London, later this year. Find out more at ysp.co.uk/finer