LITTLE EYES

Little Eyes is the title of a video work that was originally conceived as part of the Emptiness Project. It was subsequently reversioned and shown separately at the Move on Asia single channel video exhibition in 2004. The work is essentially a series of “portraits” of small ornaments found on the shelves of regional opportunity shops; an archive of abandonment concerned with the collecting and ordering of appearances. These stranded trinkets have each been chosen for their just-right blend of anthropomorphism and pathos. Each ornament is scrutinised by the camera as it slowly hovers around its subject. The transformation of scale that occurs renders these objects at once strangely engaging and monstrous. The tiny is now magnified to near human size within the confines of the screen. Cracks appear and painted expressions are amplified. The viewer is at once confronted with a tension between the forlorn look of the object and its absurdity made large. These orphaned trinkets posses a cloying sentimentality. It is sentimentality arrived at by design, mass-produced and then abandoned.

To view a streaming Quicktime version of Little Eyes click on an image below.