Output details

Kilkenny Shift (2009) [Single channel SD video installation 5’29”]

Kilkenny Shift was a video installation, combining photographic stills and an audio recording, based on Davies’s movement along the passageways used by servants at Kilkenny Castle. It was a continuation of Davies’s work using photographic stills to form animated video in relation to themes of site, embodied experience and hidden histories. Digital photographs were taken of the hidden servants’ staircase, literally retracing the servants’ steps. The photographs were edited and collaged into a video using edit and dissolve techniques, upon which an audio of Davies’ frantic descent down the steps was superimposed. Reanimated photographic still and continuous, recorded sound were combined to create a sense of disjunction. The work sought to reveal the unspoken in relation to the passageways throughout Kilkenny Castle, but not through direct representation. The principal disjunction occurred between the stills corresponding to steps as things that endure, and the hurried footfalls, echoes and breathing of ‘in the moment’ sound. In this way, an aspect of the site formerly overlooked was expressed in a way that acknowledges the subjective, embodied condition of historical understanding.

The work was commissioned by the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, and has also been shown at the Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea, 2009; Tallinna Kunstihoone Fond, Estonia, 2010; and at Fold Gallery, London, 2012. Three of the four exhibitions had catalogues: the Shift exhibition (Kilkenny), Seeriad/Series (Tallinn), and Between a Rock and a Hard Place (Swansea). It was reviewed in the Irish Sunday Times Culture Magazine 10.5.09, by the Arts Desk, also in 2009, and by Flux and Artlyst in 2012. The work was funded by a Major Creative Wales Award, Wales Arts International, and the British Council.