Feel Stupid

Feel Stupid (2024) is an expanded film installation with five 16mm film loops that stretch across the gallery space. The film installation, made with Louisa’s long-term collaborators, composer Richard Glover, singer Samuel Middleton and performer Nancy Trotter Landry, once again responds to a drawing from Hetta Fairclough’s (1973-2008) sketchbook as a sonic score. The page now smudged with the shadow of time has strips of masking tape that hinge from the centre over folded newspaper cuttings. Along each length of masking tape is a phrase she’s written in felt-tip pen. Shards of these phrases were intoned and recorded onto tape; they now splinter across the film loops like a maelstrom of anxious thoughts. Projected onto five small pieces of float glass are gestures illuminated by a flashgun, glimpses of a pulling down and a contracting of things, an embodiment of some sort of reality that is not, a turmoil inside the head and body.

Feel Stupid was commissioned by and made with the support of Arts University Plymouth (MIRROR Gallery). Installation at Danielle Arnaud gallery. Documentation: Sean Dougherty