Degree Show, Glasgow School of Art, 2012

The Mackintosh Building, June 2012

Five video installations within one of the balcony spaces of The Mackintosh Building. One of the installations used live-feed video, the others used short snippets from video recorded using a mobile phone in public spaces (glitchy, pixelated videos from 2012 tech).

Installation photo of viewer within the Degree Show installation space.

Face, 2012

A gallery space with white walls. There are two plinths, a woman leans over one of the plinths to look into a hole in the top of it.
Face, 2012. White plinth with peephole in the top. Inside the plinth a monitor can be seen.
Materials: MDF, monitor, two live-feed cameras. The monitor inside the plinth shows live footage that alternates between the two camera angles.
View inside the plinth to the monitor showing live video of the participant as they look into the plinth.
Face, 2012. View inside the plinth to the monitor while it is showing live video of the participant as they look into the plinth.
View inside the plinth to the monitor showing live video of the participant from a close-up angle while they look into the plinth.
Face, 2012. View inside the plinth to the monitor while it is showing live video of the participant from a close-up angle while they look into the plinth. (In this case, the camera taking the photograph obscures the face).

Eye, 2012

A woman leans over a plinth looking into a small hole in the top of the plinth.
Eye, 2012. White plinth with peephole in the top. Inside the plinth a mobile phone screen can be seen through a slightly reflective plaster channel.
Materials: MDF, plaster, mobile phone screen. Duration: 9 seconds, looped.
View inside the plinth - a narrow channel leads down to show a video of an eye which was looking towards the camera. The colours from the video are reflected by the channel.
Eye, 2012. View inside the plinth, through the slightly reflective plaster channel, to the video screen. The pixelated video shows a stranger’s eye, which looks around and then makes contact with the camera lens (and therefore, viewer).

Yawn, 2012

Yawn, 2012. A pixelated video showing a woman yawning was installed high up, behind the gallery wall, through a circular cut-out.
Materials: MDF, mobile phone screen. Duration: 9 seconds, looped.
Yawn, 2012. Video still.

Nose, 2012

The corner of a gallery space has been partially screened off with a narrow strip of painted MDF that runs from floor to ceiling. A gap runs along the left hand edge of the screening and a feint glow of pinky-orange light can be seen reflected onto the wall.
Nose, 2012. The corner of the gallery space has been partially screened off by a narrow strip of painted MDF. Through the gap along the left edge a mobile phone can be viewed.
Materials: MDF, timber, mobile phone screen. Duration: 28 seconds, looped.
Nose, 2012. Video still.
The video shows a pixelated close-up of a stranger as they pick their nose.

Crack, 2012

grey painted floorboards with a small gap between them, the colourful pixels of a mobile phone can be glimpsed.
Crack, 2012. A pixelated video showing a man sitting on grass and leaning forward, revealing the groove between his buttocks. Installed below the gallery floor to be viewed by crouching down and looking between the gap in the floorboards.
Materials: timber, mobile phone screen. Duration: 12 seconds, looped.

Emma Reid’s show looks minimal in the extreme, but in fact her cunningly placed cameras and tiny screens give us cheeky little insights into the most human of behaviours.

SUSAN MANSFIELD, THE SCOTSMAN, Visual art review: GSA Degree Show|GSA MFA Degree Show, JUNE 14TH 2012

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