The Woman’s Wardrobe

In his book ‘kicking the pricks’, Derek Jarman wrote extensively on the ‘Cinema as endangered species’:“The cinema is to the 20th century what the diorama was to the 19th. Endangered species are always elevated, put in glass cases. The cinema has graduated to the museum, the archive, the collegiate cinema, and now it’s the turn of video”The ‘Woman’s Wardrobe’ is a film installation about narrative in film, which also explores aspects of Jarman’s assertion.

The installation is located behind four walls of plastic sheeting in the centre of a large space.

In essence it is a collection of the detritus of a film workshop. The work tells of an event, a disruption, a chaotic upheaval.

Blue tarpaulins placed strategically around the periphery of the space absorb natural light and cast a cool blue hue throughout. The effect is a sensation of the freeze frame both the film and the filming are cut off —— suddenly? Violently?

But this is just the beginning. You are led by tracking rails into the centre where on closer scrutiny the installation reveals its evidence – a broken pair of glasses, an empty cigar packet, the faded title on a film canister, the presence or perhaps the non presence of the film itself.

What happened? What caused the upheaval? What is the woman’s wardrobe?

This is the story about an event that disrupted a narrative.