FTHo

Stills from Catalogue – with Jennifer Pike By Holly Antrum (2013-14)

Showing work that was visible at the time of visits to Pike's then home in North London - and eventually installing them into Camden Arts Centre for the film - Antrum's basis was to take into account only what came about in person, not to undercut the artist with other research from what she would offer herself, despite the limitations to her memory by her age.

"The privilege of making this work was access to the person, and personality, so what I know of Jennifer, her work and her life comes through her directly, this was the exercise, which partly had to fail", says Antrum, "once Jennifer left London halfway through making the film (to go into care), I began to make small appropriations with a selection of her work to feed back into the film, as the house was no longer animated by her presence, which originally was most important. The house was packed up, the physical collection of things dismantled and yes, I learnt a lot more about an artists life, what it is to be 93 with a creative mind, and to adapt, from making this film."

In an exchange between their two practices, speaking and filming enlist as performances, documentation, sound, improvisation, image distortion, and dance, reveal shared interests. 

Given that Pike has been an active figure throughout her her life, disparately productive (exhibiting in small public galleries and underground spaces linked with Better Books, she was also notably invited to exhibit in the 1979 Venice Biennale curation Women betwixt Language and Image), she worked amongst her peers in London and internationally, who in turn she documented as a photographer and designer closer to home. Pike remains obliging, using her own performance of her late husband Bob Cobbing’s poem ‘ABC in Sound’ to draw out her own character; perhaps the character of an actor giving away her first ‘craft’. The recitation serves as a template where her physical memory, the cover is designed by her and her enactment of it - is both touched and untouched by her age.. it offers the viewer a remove with enough of an insight to see her now and in earlier years. The running camera and it’s filmstock frame the unfolding and often comic moments between the subject and the media around her, between the artist subject and artist filmmaker, each engaging with situation, language, colour and (their) representation along the way.

Funded by the Elephant Trust and Arts Council England