Gravity//Thomas Yeomans

This Thursdays Gravity lecture was given by a young artist called Thomas Yeomans. Having previously studied an undergraduate degree at Slade and an Ma in painting at the Royal College of Art, Yeomans now creates video pieces using preexisting footage found on the internet. Despite his current practice, he still considers himself a painter, but prefers the process of finding appropriate footage and editing it all together to become a piece of his own. During the lecture he spoke about authorship and referencing the original pieces of video he had used in his own work, he said that he didn't reference because original footage had been created into something else and was now his own. He also spoke a lot about using pre-existing footage to create his video pieces; he uses this partly because of the visual affect that can be achieved but also because he doubts his own technical ability to create something that looks good and has authenticity.

Yeomans showed a number of clips of some of his work, most of which I didn't particularly engage with, but there was one clip that was part of a longer piece that did interest me. It played wit the idea that as a society, we are far too engaged with social media and the internet; so engaged that it takes over reality and we would rather be connected with the fast moving world around us than involved simply in our own lives and what is happening in them. The next part of the clip was shots of TV advertisements from fashion, electronic and internet companies, which links with the previous idea that technology is taking over. The idea behind the video piece was extremely thought provoking and the preexisting footage that was used fit very well and looked stunning as part of the piece.