EWVA European Women's Video Art
Catherine ELWES
Key Works
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Postcard (1986)
3m 46s
3/4" Umatic
'When my son was only a few months old, I recorded a 4 minute sequence of me trying to dress him while he howled his ritual protest. The post-card theme allowed me to explain the situation in a despairing message to my mother. The constant crying of an infant is experienced as an assault on what is left of one's sanity after months of sleep deprivation and the nagging of post-partum aches and pains. Add poverty and three other kids and you get a sample of what drives many women to valium and violence.' - Catherine Elwes, 1986
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The Critic's Informed Viewing (1982)
26m 20s
3/4" Umatic
In the piece, Elwes is seen on an ordinary night in watching the TV. She then begins to give a critique on what she sees on the screen, although more of a train of thought, highlighting the shallowness and banality of popular television. She particularly singles out the pop music programme 'Top of the Pops'. A more serious and intellectual precursor to Channel 4's 'Goggle Box'.
'...she is doing what the TV producers so often fail to do... to build up a a realistic view of the audience... to respect their intelligence and find a way of communicating with them that is both enjoyable and stimulating.' - Pete Shelton, Performance Magazine, 1983
Kensington Gore (1982)
12m 4s
3/4" Umatic
'In Kensington Gore, a real life injury which happened on a location shoot is related in various theatrical forms ranging from the slapstick of mime to the authority of a text read with my classic BBC accent. In this way the story is constantly being reduced to the form of its telling and I never present it as the irrefutable truth. In the same way that reality and fiction are often interchangeable, the truth of an event has as many versions as there were witnesses.' - Catherine Elwes
'How does one understand the image of violence inflicted by a woman on a man's neck with apprently the sole aim of manipulating the audience? The humour of this piece is abrasive and disconcertingly courageous. It may be aggressive, but it has the merit of scrutinising a tabood but universal subject, in this case, female violence.' - Bruno Mersch
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