Model Descending a Staircase No.2

We celebrate the presence of celebrities in the world, and our presence with them. The glitz, the glamour and the tragedy of their work and lives we share with them as the minutia of their daily round is revealed to us. From the supermodel to the artist, fame is an acknowledgement of the perfection of the moments they inhabit.

Marcel Duchamp's 'Nude Descending a Staircase No.2' was a distinguishing moment in 1902 when art was redefined, again. Contributing to the early 20th Century’s surge into the modern era, the painting affirmed within a single image a representation and presence of a figure in the spatial setting of a staircase, as a temporal entity. Informed by photography and the kinomatographic motion picture, the painting and other works from the period encouraged the art-going public to move away from ‘retinal’ art and through the deconstruction of motion, to begin the process of embracing the conceptual underpinnings of art-making.

‘Model Descending a Staircase No. 2’ perversely reflects on the moving image itself as a temporal entity, locked into the suspension of a timelessly and seamlessly repeated image, that of a celebrated supermodel as she steps down onto the catwalk. The retinal ‘eye-candy’ of the contemporary celebrity, encountered in countless public and private architectural settings, are presented to us on myriad rectangular screens of dimensions that vary from mobile phone to stadium in size. In the proposed installation, the interpolation of image and scale recall the medieval altarpieces with depictions of celebrants and supplicants. Utilising mass-produced television screens, the isolated images of movers and gazers rotate through their routines of spectacle, a contemporary version of represented space/time interceding in the daily round of a public space.

Sample of installation, variable dimensions - main centre screen with two smaller peripheral screens.