The Hatch
2-channel high definition video • in progress, 2013
Valley of the Deer
high definition video (48:30 minutes) and 3-channel video (21:35 minutes)• 2012
Filmed across northern Scotland, and featuring fifty local residents as masked animal figures, this work tells a visual tale of a haunted valley. Oral folklore and local legends (both real and imagined) lend an air of magical realism. Romantic landscapes figure prominently as the camera reveals majestic views of mossy glens, barley fields, heathered mountains, fairy knolls, rainbows, woodland creatures. Apparitions of live animals appear amidst the ghostly figures.
Costumes were created on location in response to the landscape and traditional highland dress.
The soundtrack features local musicians and sounds recorded on location. This work was created
in residence at the Glenfiddich International Artist's Residency in Dufftown, Scotland.
video and images here
Something Wicked (This Way Comes)
high definition video • 6:25 minutes • 2012
Festival flags, strung from a town's stone clocktower, and fluttering in the wind, suggest a foreboding presence.
Created in residence at Glenfiddich Distillery, Scotland.
A Prairie Horror
high definition video • 13:28 minutes • 2011
A little house on the prairie is overrun with zombies. Shot in rural Manitoba and featuring a cast of local actors, the narrative is minimal and the focus is the chase, the ambush and the feast. A single victim remains standing.
Created in residence at Gallery One One One, University of Manitoba School of Art.
Hunger
3-channel video • 2011
The artist inserts her image digitally into TV and film scenes from Twilight (New Moon), True Blood, and Being Human. As the (replaced) ingénue hopeful of shared immortality, she is locked in endless staring contests with Edward, Bill, and Mitchell - the leading male vampires from these series who share brooding good looks, apparent youth, advanced vampire years, immortality's curse, abstinence from blood and in some cases sex, and an ability to pass as mortal. These are the new breed vampires of our dreams - insatiable, beautiful, charming, yet dangerous. Separate hungers unite them with their mortal prey. Time is suspended in the staring contests where no one wins and no one loses.
Commissioned and curated by Kate Armstrong and Malcolm Levy.
Slasher Cycle
4-channel video installation • in post-production, 2011
Four actors dressed as characters Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees,Freddy Krueger,
and Leatherface stalk an empty house, finding no victims. In installation
4 projections on opposite walls surround the viewers with the characters who appear to be stalking one another.
Starring Reid Johnston as Michael Myers, Pawel Kruk as Jason Voorhees, Joe McKay as Freddy Krueger, and Beckley
Roberts as Leatherface.
Filmed in residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts in California.
Incident at the Pool
high definition video • 5:40 minutes • 2011
A desert sunbather is killed by her potted cacti, the body dumped poolside.
Created in residence at ASU Art Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.
Field of the Dead and Undead
high definition video • 18:30 minutes • 2011
Various people enter a foggy field one by one, die, then stagger off as zombies. Meanwhile other zombies haunt the gloomy field. The actors were all given a simple instruction, shot separately, and composited together (a process that took three years to complete) to lend their appearances an other-worldly quality.
Filmed on location at Golden Gate National Park, California while in residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts. • Costumes by A.M. Richard • Soundtrack composed by Knocker, arranged by Knocker and Jillian Mcdonald.
RedRum
high definition video • 7:44 minutes • 2010
Its title a reference to The Shining where a boy predicts "redrum" (murder) before a hotel elevator bursts with blood and all hell breaks loose, this video has a haunted horror theme. The scenes take us through a cavernous home where blood - a predominant prop in horror films - drips from faucets, runs down mirrors, and pools on stairs. This blood appears disembodied until the camera slowly reveals its haunted source, visiting neighbouring houses that also drip with blood, suggesting a murderous streak. RedRum, filmed on location in Buffalo, NY in late 2009, features local teenagers, Buffalo homes, and The Buffalo Soundpainting Ensemble.
Created in residence at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center.
Alone Together in the Dark
high definition video installation • 2009
Two videos projected on opposite walls feature zombies and vampires staging a dramatic Western-style showdown at dawn in the desert. Surrounding the videos are floor-to-ceiling photographic murals that wrap the gallery in local desert imagery: cacti, mountain, rugged terrain, contemporary ghost towns, and graveyards. Freestanding photographic cacti rattle dryly via tiny speakers.
Created in residence at ASU Art Museum with a cast of locals in Tempe, Arizona, including 50 actors,
4 videographers, 1 documentary photographer, 10 make-up artists, and 1 sound designer.
more info and images here
Apocalypse Zombie
high definition video • 5:44 minutes (loop) • 2009
A re-imagined final scene from the 1985 New Zealand film "Quiet Earth". A woman on the beach is zombified by an unseen force that also causes beautiful atmospheric meltdown, over and over again.
Created in residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts in California
Apparition
video • 1:34 minutes • 2009
Footage recorded in 1997 but never used until now features an apparition: a haunted chandelier hanging in the middle of the street.
Staring Contest with Brad Pitt
video • 1:30 minutes (loop) • 2008
I insert my image digitally into a scene from Meet Joe Black, caught in a endless staring contest with actor Brad Pitt which no one wins and no one loses.
The Sparkling
installation: video projector, custom software, sensor, Mac mini, speakers • 2008
TV = Evil
video • 2008
A TV hypnotizes and absorbs a beautiful girl and spits out her evil twin, a watery corpse. (Footage from Poltergeist and The Ring)
Created in residence at ThreeWalls in Chicago.
Superfan
video • 2008
Superfan features the artist, trespassing digitally into scenes from Hollywood films. She rides in vehicles with costars Billy Bob Thornton and Donald Sutherland, but despite their attempts at conversation, the trio of male leads cannot shake her concentration on the game, that is, the final minutes of a Superbowl game radio broadcast.
Commissioned by Art Engine (Canada).
Vampire Hunt
2-channel video • 2007
Vampire Hunting is a two-channel video in which projections on two opposing
walls position the viewer in the center of a visual loop, wherein a vampire
endlessly pursues her prey. On screen, I “play”
both roles.
more info
Everyone Will Suffer
animation • 2007
"Death is a Shortcut, Evil has found a new home..." Familiar taglines from popular 1970s onward horror films form a spoken warning,
the subject ever evasive. Sundown creeps slowly across a country setting, rendered as an 8-bit animation reminiscent of early computer graphics and video games.
listen to excerpt
The Screaming
video • 11 minutes • 2007
I trespass digitally into existing horror films scenes. Uttering a scream on cue with the startling action, but
rather than screaming in helpless horror, I scream to scare the monsters away, or even destroy them. (pictured -
screaming in Hallowe'en)
more info and excerpt from video
The Bloom of the Triffid
animation • 2006
The Bloom of the Triffid is an animation. I tracked the bloom of Brookyn's corpse flower during August 2006 via The Brooklyn Botanical Garden's webcam. I compiled still images from the webcam into a stop motion animation and digitally altered it to frame the strange bloom in a spotlight. The bloom made national deadlines as the first of it's kind to bloom in New York since 1939. Visiting it in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens I was struck by it's diva quality, all alone in the center of a greenhouse with hordes of fans, cameras snapping, and news correspondents. Brooklyn's borough president Marty Markowitz proclaimed August 10th "Baby the Corpse Flower Bloom Day". A triffid is a fictional carnivourous plant.
Zombie Loop
2-channel video • 2006
Zombie Loop is a two-channel video in which projections on two opposing
walls position the viewer in the center of a visual loop, wherein a gruesome
zombie endlessly pursues a running survivor. On screen, I “play”
both zombie and survivor.
more info and installation documentation
Chester and Poncho
2-channel DVD • 2005 • 20 seconds loop • colour
Chester and Poncho are chihuahuas that do everything together, and look roughly the same. Frequently they are taken for twins though they are quite unalike in mannerism and personality.
Billy Bob Got Plastic Surgery
DVD • 2004 • 30 seconds
site-specific TV commercial for The Drake Hotel, 2004
Drum Solo for Billy Bob
DVD • Aug 4, 2004 (Billy Bob's 49th Birthday) • 3 minutes • colour/sound
I drummed morse code for "I Love You Billy Bob" on my skin with the
drumstick Billy Bob handed me from the stage of his concert tour, Sept 5,
2003
visit MeAndBillyBob.com for more info and video excerpt
Billy Bob Tattoo
drawing on my knee, every day in June.
DVD • 20 minutes, looped • 2004
visit MeAndBillyBob.com for more info and video excerpt
Screen Kiss
DVD and website 2005.
detail from Screen Kiss.
• Created with support from Soil Digital Media in Regina
more info, and video excerpt
Me and Billy Bob
limited edition DVD • 7 minutes • 2003
• Created with support from The Canada Council on the Arts, Pace University, and NYSCA
visit MeAndBillyBob.com