Mixed media installation
Based on found video footage – in which the distortion produced by a zoom lens is presented by its author as evidence of a celestial conspiracy – Signal Test is a multi-screen installation that reflects on the technical mediation of identity, intimacy and loss.
Extension
5 channel video, stereo sound, 5 hours
Produced by Poor Image Projects, Extension is a durational audio-visual installation/performance created specifically for the renowned Cosmic Slop sound-system in Leeds, UK.
Aross the multple screens of Extension, objects, materials and technical devices appear within scenarios that document various stages of their conditions as they are activated, demonstrated and tested. Furniture is set on fire, fabric is torn by wind, holes have been punched through walls. Images repeat as variations within a series of the same, while others appear in insolation as discrete movements are endlessly repeated. These mute images are choreographed by an audio track that envelopes the screens, as shifts in timbre, pitch and melody are matched by the movements they display. Occurring at brief intervals such moments of synchrony and synchresis emerge from the dumb articulations of the mechanical to reveal glimpses of an agential gesticulation.
Enthusiasm Video installation, four-channel, colour, sound, 1hr
“The archaic roots of the word ‘enthusiasm’ are from the Greek for being possessed by a god. The enthusiastic person is divinely inspired and speaks in tongues and dances. We think of glossolalia as fast, the word itself sounds fast, but it is also possible for inspiration to emerge from a slowing and stretching of time, in which absences are amplified and the divine speaks so slowly that its/their words break apart into bass and dust [...]
[...] There are all the things the ear wants to hear when it looks. There are all the things the eye thinks it’s hearing. Here we’re holding these hearings, in hands that hold and un-hold in a fight or a dance. To hold sound and to capture it are different actions. The held sound is held in a balance, aware of the risks. It is liable to spill, break or be lost. It is too little or too much. Distortion clusters at the edge of the frame from an excess of touch: from the hand, from the air [...]
[...] In the failure of technology to apprehend the elements, light, wind, dust, air and water are transformed into ghosts, orbs, EVP, simulacra. The transformations are strengthened in their telling and retelling, in comments threads and videos that multiply in corroboration or in response to debunking. They pass across time and across screens.”
– Extracts from a text by Frances Morgan to accompany the exhibition Enthusiasm at Centre for Audio Visual Experimentation, Univeristy of Leeds, 2017
Monologue
Video, single-channel, colour, 30 mins
“With Monologue, Patrick Ward has skilfully edited together a pool of handheld footage culled from video-sharing Web sites. In silence, a single and anonymous viewpoint scans, probes, and travels through a labyrinthine interior. As the viewer follows, ambling down dark halls, peering into basements,moving from room to room, an impossible ruin begins to take form [...]
Ward’s careful editing weaves a past of affluence, stability, and activity together with a present of desertion, decay, and regression. In following the circuitous route of the footage, we are trailing the path of capital [...]
Monologue kicks up the dust of history, a musty and melancholic haze behind each of Ward’s precise edits.”
– Extract from a review by Robin Simpson, Ceil Varite, Issue 87, Fall, 2011
This Is It
Neon and Plexiglass, 100x 80 x 45 cm
A space that is within the gallery but also outside it, beyond the access of the public, is illuminated by a neon sign that simply reads: THIS IS IT.
Patrick Ward is an artist working with moving-image, sound and music in various modes of exhibition, performance and installation. A graduate of The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (MFA) Ward is a current postgraduate researcher at the Centre for Audio Visual Experimentation, Faculty of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds. He is a Senior Lecturer at The School of Art, Architecture and Design, London Metropolitan University and an associate lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts, University of The Arts London
