Graham Ellard & Stephen Johnstone

Graham Ellard & Stephen Johnstone have worked in collaboration since 1993. Their work lies between architecture and cinema and concerns the ways in which space is represented and shaped through projected image.

Motion path is a video installation, which was presented at the De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill on Sea. It is a visually experiential insight into the work of the modernist architect, Erich Mendelsohn and concerns how to approach a building cinematically. Ellard & Johnstone take the viewer on a fluid path through Mendelsohn's buildings, using the architecture to guide the motion of the camera. The natural sense of movement presents shifting perspectives, and a unfolding architectural objects as the viewer progresses through the spaces. The films were then presented on a series of small table-top screens within the gallery, their arrangement encouraged a navigational path through the space in order to view the artwork, and hence reflected the filming process.

Motion Path at the De La Warr Pavilion

Images from Ellard & Johnstone website

The description of this project on the Ellard & Johnstone website, gives an extremely fascinating and in depth overview of the project and the fluidity of Mendelsohn's buildings, setting the artists' work into context.

I have found this work extremely outstanding for its approach to the relationship between architecture and film. Particularly of relevance at this stage of my project due to the use of devices to film architectural spaces. Devices which truly interact with the architectural spaces and which are derived from the particularity of the architectural spaces in order to give an insight into the motion path of these spaces.