Glazing

A collaborative experiment between 14 artists around the globe. Each artist creates a background, All backgrounds are traded randomly, and then animated upon freely.

Author Barry Gifford's gritty autobiographical stories of growing up in 1950s Chicago provide the backdrop for an impressionistic documentary portrait of a vanished time and place.

Precarious and fluid arrangements constantly interrupt one another in a montage of waiting, anticipating, and transitioning forms. Arrangements of marks and geometric forms are faced with unresolved states. Objects struggle to maintain their shape, stay upright, or avoid disappearing. "Crux Film" is an animation composed of segments of work by Lilli Carré and Alexander Stewart. Created over the course of several weeks in shared studio spaces, these simple animated segments developed directly in response to one another; ideas, images, challenges and structures ping-ponging back and forth between the two animator’s light boxes.

A living room shrinks only to expand again in this morphing animation. The skilful line work reveals a cupboard, a door lock and a tap, but also personal items transitioning – increasingly urgently – into one another. Lilli Carré, whose graphic novels are published by Fantagraphics, created a forensic investigation of a private space which can continually change shape.

Friends reminisce and speculate about an upcoming Groundhog Day party

Painted formless figures haunt recent photos of empty public spaces, expressing a helpless, frantic energy felt in our current moment. They become displaced from their locations, as their environments dissolve and their printed record evaporates.

Jill builds on the history of the rebellious cartoon body. Set in a plain white room reminiscent of a gallery space or testing laboratory, an acousmatic voice interacts with Jill through a series of commands. Jill shows the wear and tear of slapstick, maintaining dents on a body that seems to feel no pain. The piece speaks to power dynamics between creator and creation, recalling one of the earliest animations, Gertie the Dinosaur.

Everything leaks at least a little.

A fruit grows. A woman eats it.