In Claire Hope’s video Contact (2016), female actors and students perform a series of affectionate interactions. Beginning with forms of touch recognisable from cinema, visual media and daily life, the video goes on to show a range of increasingly creative, physical gestures. The premise of Contact is to depict, in moving images, the kinds of creative bodily intimacy that can be seen between people who are close, or attached but are often absent from visual culture and social media. Hope is interested in how relationships are experienced and depicted in capitalist cultures, and how this can differ from the potential that actually exists between people.
Shown as part of The Fold, an exhibition programme curated by Dr Sam Belinfante, School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies.
Project Space, 28 March – 13 April 2017
