Informed by mainstream cinema and experimental film, Price’s work is concerned with the medium of digital video and its comparative ubiquity in today’s culture. Price’s commission will explore the archives and collections of the Ashmolean Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum (which cares for Oxford’s holdings of anthropology and world archaeology), in particular the photographs of artefacts and documents created by curators and by anthropologists and archaeologists working in the field. The new work will disclose the differing taxonomic systems that have shaped and been employed by the two institutions while simultaneously engaging with the social and psychological implications of digital technologies.
The work, to comprise of a single-screen video, will present and narrate artefacts from the Ashmolean’s collection, with a focus on the female figure and the photographic and archival means of disclosing this figure over time. The commission will enable the Ashmolean Museum to add a significant moving image work to its existing holdings of contemporary art, to be premiered in Oxford upon completion, and will be a timely addition to the museum’s 330th anniversary celebrations in 2015.
