Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Distance, presents the absence of belief, where labour is estranged and invisibly services ?lifestyle?. Helen stays at a hotel for a conference, and has invited her sister and her nephew (Grant) to join for the weekend. After Helen leaves for the day?s session, Grant grows bored and listless after playing while his mother sleeps and wanders off into the hotel. He amuses himself for a number of hours playing in the corridors and spaces of the hotel, while occasionally voyeuristically watching the staff at work. He returns to the room to find Helen also at the door, her conference finished for the day. They sit in the room and Helen waits for Grant?s mother to return who is not there when they enter. The mother does return briefly, but only to change into something more suitable for dinner, and leaves again, to the silent frustration of Helen. Helen then also abandons Grant to his own devices while she goes off to her evening function.

Simon Gush (b.1981, ZA) is a South African artist currently based Johannesburg. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2003. Gush was a laureate at the HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts) in Ghent, Belgium, in 2007/8 and a Gordon Institute of Performing and Creative Arts Fellow at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2011. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions internationally and locally and has held solo shows at the SMAK (Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst) in Ghent (2010), West, Den Haag, the Netherlands (2010), and the Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town (2009 & 2010) and Johannesburg (2009 & 2011). Gush has been included in two international publications surveying young contemporary artists: the Younger Than Jesus Directory published by the new Museum in New York, USA (2009); and 100 New Artists by Francesca Gavin, published by Laurence King Publishing (2011). Alongside his artistic practice, Gush has collaborated in founding and facilitating a number of alternative temporary exhibition platforms, most notably the Parking Gallery in 2006, which was relaunched in 2012.