Sophie Michael
2021Rabbit Hole
Sophie Michael
“Yes, a white wardrobe can be a rabbit hole. That’s definitely unusual!” Sophie Michael’s new moving image work finds its unique meeting point in the connection of proto-cinematic, abstract experiments with the development of early years speech in children. As such, Rabbit Hole centres on two distinct perceptual phenomena that are magical and seemingly beyond rational explanation.
Rabbit Hole
99 Clerkenwell Road
Sophie Michael
Filmed in an empty shop, the remaining features of the space are used to create a kaleidoscopic light film. Ceiling lamps become coloured spheres and circles that sweep across the frame. Pillars provide wipes and fades, window shutters are hole punched stencils, passing buses shoot beams of light. A toy solar system appears. Scale and depth constantly shift and colours are blindly combined as exposures gradually multiply
99 Clerkenwell Road
Untitled (Objects 3)
Sophie Michael
A pink shape is examined through a clear plastic cassette case in a series of combinations of found objects held up together in front of the camera. Colours and transparencies pose as gels and lenses until the sequence shifts, making materials behave unnaturally--mixing up insides with outsides; light with colour; time with place; left with right, forced together to prevent any physical point of contact. A filmic and sculptural enquiry into the depth and slippage between a two-dimensional field and its actual location in three-dimensional space.
Untitled (Objects 3)
The Watershow Extravaganza
Sophie Michael
A warbling organ accompanies the expiring vestiges of choreographed neon light and fountains in Sophie Michael’s trippy The Watershow Extravaganza, which records the eponymous, near-derelict attraction at Watermouth Castle theme park in Devon — a spectacle eerily devoid of spectators and on the verge of exhaustion and hysteria.
The Watershow Extravaganza
