Ellie Bradford
Artist, Video Artist
Art works
These collection of works is based on a series of 6 short (1-5min) videos which are extracts from a larger body of work which responds to the conditions I faced after losing my job and being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
The videos are mainly set in my flat and focus on what life was actually like: going to Sainsbury's, playing computer games, playing with my cat, meeting my partner. At the same time, these autobiographical elements are also used to explore the material culture through which I emerge as an unemployed and unwell woman. The lo-fi aesthetic is designed to bluntly-playfully reflect that my life was unsuccessful by the standards of capitalist society. I was not working and did not have much money, and the artwork which my formal training as an artist allowed me to produce was not worth much either.
Video 1 (5m 30s) is me lying on the floor of my flat, shot at the same level as the floor. I am lying on a plastic sheet in a ‘Barbie’ bikini and my cat is eating pieces of tuna off me. Stock music from iMovie, slowed and reversed, is playing. The titles for a podcast I am making appear on the screen - I remain motionless.
Video 2 (4m 8s) is shot like a Youtube video blog. I am animated and facing the camera which I am holding free-hand while I interact with my cat. I wanted to make a series of video works that subvert the Youtube video blog style. The music used is taken from these video blogs and distorted and reversed to make them sound unsettling. The video is designed to make you experience a version of the parasocial relationship I found myself having with a content creator called ‘Jenna Marbles’, whose videos I became addicted to. They would be about her life and what she was doing that week. I could experience her life through these videos. Like a simulation that allowed me to escape my own pain. In my video, the elements of my own painful experiences are both erased and replaced by something upbeat and escapist, and yet are present in the weight of the disturbed atmosphere. I found that unemployment made my world shrink and I found relief through the internet and social media, which then became an intrusive fixation - and I wanted this video to convey that sense of relief and claustrophobia.
Video 3 (2m 33s) focuses on a trip to Sainsbury’s filmed using a small camera that I wore while on a real shopping trip. Various distorted and puppet versions of myself appear over the top of this raw footage. The imagery reflects of how mobile and fluctuating my sense of self and reality were while outwardly performing a relatively banal task.
Video 4 (2m 19s) is a product of an attempt I made to create a cartoon about a character named ‘Nell’. The energy I had available from not needed to be doing a job and earn money meant I was restlessly having ideas and creating new material, but my mental health meant I also found it difficult to complete or define the material I was creating. In this video, I recite a short monologue introducing the character of ‘Nell’ who is born out of a broken rib, and whose feelings and ability to communicate are described over a soothing background piece of music and footage from a visit to London Zoo. The language used to describe ‘Nell’ uses some psychiatric terminology, but the tone is gentle and almost like a child’s fairy-tale.
Video 5 (1m 17s) simultaneously show 3 shots of me taken on my phone - all using filters which radically change my appearance. In the middle shot, my head is egg-shaped, and my expression is worried and disorientated. Both of the two outer shots are taken using filters which grotesquely exaggerate my features into a grinning mask. The audio track is a robotic voice explaining how artists can become successful.
Video 6 (2m 7s) is a clip from a project where I interview people and then I make a video using puppets to recreate the interview. In the clip, the person I am interviewing is represented by a puppet made out of sea-shell and I am represented as a small shrimp made of wool and sitting in a miniature chair. Two male puppets sit to the side and observe silently.