Ellen Sampson Selected Works 2019 | SARF

Images

Cloth

Cloth (2016) [Digital Photographs]

The marks upon the shoe are traces of the gestures performed within them, records of being in the world.  The relationship between body, footwear and memory is one in which three agents are in constant dialogue.  The body imprints its form on the shoe, leather stretching, and sole wearing away; in turn, the shoe alters the body, distorting bones and hardening skin: movement inscribes memory.  Through wear and the process of bodily imprint, footwear becomes a container for experience. The garment, in touching the skin, becomes a site where internal and external experience may meet.

Worn Polaroids

(2016) [Fuji FP100c]

A series of polaroids which record a performance in which 12 pairs of shoes were worn over the course of a year. The performance was recorded only through the marks of wear on the shoes i had made and worn. 

Cyanotypes Work In Progress

(2019) [Digital negatives, cyanotype]

Work in progress images examining marks of wear and trace in objects within the Costume Institute collection at the Metropolitan Museum Of Art, New York.

Work undertaken as Polaire Weissman fellow 2019.

The impossibility of Touch: TinType Work In Progress

(2019) [8x10 TinType Direct Positive Prints]

Films

Worn (Excerpt)

Worn (2015) [Film Projection: 23 minutes 51 seconds. Shoes: Copper, cedar, wax, leather, gold left copper leaf, silk and cotton]

A woman enters room puts on a pair of shoes and leaves, an act repeated again and again and again…

Drawing on imagery from the fairy-tale, ‘Worn’ explores the triangulated relationship between the image, the artefact and the viewer. The artefact, the ‘having-been there’ object, acts as an intermediary between the viewer and the film.  It is both ‘here-now’ with the viewer and at the same time it is ‘there-then’ within the film.  Thus the artefact serves to emphasise the distance between the filmic record and the viewer. Within the film, this distance, the unreality of the viewing experience, is again emphasised by the use of three cameras positioned around the room.

Fold

Ellen Sampson Fold (2013) [Video]

Gestures

Gestures (2013) [Video]

Film studying the gestures associated with the wearing of footwear. Research for the performance piece' Dance'.