Alice Finbow

Alice Finbow graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2006 with a Masters in Fine Art Photography.  In 2005 she won the European Leica prize and in 2006 was awarded a Residency at Paris’s Cité Internationale des Arts along with the Painters Stainers Guild award for Photography.  She has also been given commissions by Channel Four, University College Hospital and Artlink as well as having exhibited in a number of exhibitions across Europe including Germany, Holland, London, Paris and Portugal.

Artist's Statement
My work is concerned with human relations; the interactions between people and the personal movements that occur either alongside or outside to such intercourse. Through observation and manipulation of physical movement I attempt to explore human understandings and relationships.

At the core of this investigation is the implication that we contain the traces of our experience: starting from the home; the place we hold in our family, genetics, to the wider world; the people we meet, the cultures we learn and have insight into.  All these impact upon how we move and who we are.

As such, I am concerned with how we read human movements. I am particularly interested in small gestures and movements that people make, both consciously and unconsciously. I am trying to draw attention to what is often overlooked. Through my video work I choreograph ‘tasks’ to reveal these physical minutiae. I often work with two subjects as this can provide a visual comparison of the movement or action I am attempting to highlight and I can utilise the device of ‘mirroring’. This is the primary Lacanian stage of learning, whilst the actions intent is mostly one of esteem it can also promote discomfort.

The notion of discomfort portrayed physically is another main concern. I explore its variations through my video-work: the changes that arise when the person you are watching is placed in situations they are not comfortable with - such as being watched; doing actions that are not their own and placing actions or gestures out of their normal context. Adversely, through my filming process sometimes my subjects become so comfortable with my presence they forget they are being observed at all, allowing for shadow movements to surface. The processes I undertake to gain such situations and their resulting gestures is experimental, real-time based and uncertain. Subsequently the accidental is not only an integral element of the work, but an informative one, through which humour and pathos occur.