Akeroyd Collection

Works

Oliver Payne & Nick Relph, Swoon Soon , 2006

Swoon Soon portrays an animated woman, strutting through a black-and-white environment from left to right in continuous motion. Like an avatar of a retro computer platform game, the ‘enemies’ she contends with are monsters and giants of another kind altogether. She casually ignores an onslaught of floating logos, brand identities, corporate graphics and pop-cultural images and icons. Her cool demeanour and confident swagger render her impervious to all that comes her way. First, a cartoon raver, vomiting a flood of ying and yang symbols, non-descript Web 1.0 era logos, a human head, fused with an alien like an early rave poster, multiple lines drawn heads reminiscent of 90’s cyber-spiritualism, the Tazmanian devil, early renderings of Felix the cat, luxury cars, wild cheetah’s, mathematics symbols, Nordic scripts, pixelated dancers like early gifs, wellness branding, municipal street furniture, and mascots underneath the UK Jobcentre logo (the Italia 90 footballer, Ronald McDonalds best friend and right-hand man, Grimace, the purple furry giant). The sheer volume of visual media and breadth of cultural references becomes overwhelming and yet the striding woman just continues on, allowing the visual noise to wash over her. This all takes place under the phases of the moon that change as a marker of time until this too falls from the sky towards her. The only thing she physically interacts with is she kicks the moon away like a football and continues on her journey.

Medium16mm film, projector, looper
Duration13 minutes 9 seconds
Editionof 7