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This show of five substantial video pieces by Maria Marshall poses questions relating to the role, power and penetration of ‘the filmic’ within contemporary culture. Constructing a series of micro-narratives or audio-visual vignettes, Marshall touches, more specifically, upon issues of innocence and invasion, presence and absence, desire and distress, and upon the perhaps irresolute relations between children and the adult-determined world that they inhabit.

The works assembled here have been meticulously produced in the manner of miniature Hollywood movies, shot by a director and assistants acting under Marshall’s instructions. Actual filmic references are, furthermore, evident throughout. In When are we there? (2000) the viewer is led down the empty but resonant corridors of a mansion reminiscent of those found in Alain Resnais’ 1961 classic Last Year at Marienbad into an unfurnished room in which stands a solitary woman wearing a plain white dress. We are forced up close to the figure, the camera brazenly scanning her body, from her unshod feet to the top of her head.





Subtle but disturbing movements occur beneath the skin of her foot, arm, stomach, chin and temple, as though some alien entity has invaded and is internally exploring the woman’s form. The next camera movement takes us swiftly away past the figure, as the whole image dissolves into the whiteness of the curtain at the rear of the frame. Then the loop begins again and we are returned to the interior through a circular skylight.

Allusions to established cinematic conventions are also made within the other works shown here, suggesting the fluid, fecund nature of what Roland Barthes has called the image-repertoire: that network of memories, intentions and connections formed through intimate and obsessive human interaction with the visual and mental image.

If the influence of mainstream cinema is, in these pieces, readily apparent, a dialogue with advertising should also be acknowledged. When I grow up I want to be a cooker (1998) depicts a small boy – the artist’s son – smoking a cigarette. This work, realistic in its illusionary conceit, foregrounds the themes of addiction and of advertising’s cynical manipulation of image and desire. Is it ‘cool’ or stupid (or both) to smoke? Are smokers innocent or willing participants in a pleasure that unpleasantly invades the space of others and which unquestionably damages the health of those involved? The smoker in this video is in due course obliterated by his own indulgence in what is literally the making of a smokescreen or visual void.
Running through most of Marshall’s work is a commentary upon how children are perceived today; it is a snapshot of a complicated society in which the predominant reading of the child is as a ‘pure’, powerless or incomplete human being. That Marshall frequently uses her own children in her work adds a further layer of moral and emotional complexity to an already entangled catch of concerns. It’s an issue that cannot easily be left aside whilst looking at these works.

I should be older than all of you (2000) is in some ways the most disturbing piece in the exhibition, presenting a small bright-eyed child lying in an elaborate box around and over which is slithering a mass of snakes. This image is again, one presumes, the result of laborious artifice, but the juxtaposition of the child with these writhing reptiles is unpleasantly convincing. Such a rigorous manipulation of ‘the real’ is what gives Marshall’s videos a positive but disruptive power. Caught between horror and a perfect but uncanny calmness, the viewer wants, simultaneously, to both watch and to look away.

Touring to Turnpike Gallery, Leigh, Greater Manchester, 21 September – 9 November 2002.

Peter Suchin

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