Genealogies weaves an associative tissue of links and references by combining novels, films, images, advertising and soundtrack from multiple sources into a baroque invocation of image and artwork provenance, remake and copy. The video traces the sculptural, gendered iconography of architecture and the female body, querying how these are visualised in cinema, and harnessed by advertising and music videos. Extending from Wilhelm Jensen’s novella Gradiva, to Freud, de Chirico, Rossellini, Curzio Malaparte, Resnais, Robbe-Grillet, Godard, Pink Floyd and the Beastie Boys to images by brands Hugo Boss and Persol, the work maps a broadly layered trajectory of ideas shared and reprised, speculating on homage, influence and originality, ultimately drawing together a genealogical lineage of adaptation, appropriation and recurrence.
Part of a multi-element constellation of works ranging from video installation and performance to works on paper that take on Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (Contempt), focusing on the film's famous location, the Villa Malaparte on Capri, and the figure of the female protagonist, Camille, played by Brigitte Bardot. The network of relationships established raises questions about the economies of authorship and gender as well as the relationship between objects, cinematographic and architectonic space.